On Sunday, residents of the Los Lagos community contacted the Smith family, who run the Bacab Ecopark, telling them that riders were galloping away on their horses down the Philip Goldson Highway. And it wasn't employees riding those horses; the horsemen were actually boys the youngest, an eleven year old. Police chased down the young horse wranglers, and arrested all three. We spoke to Lourdes Smith, Bacab's Sales and Marketing Director about the incident.
Lourdes Smith, Sales & Marketing Dir., Bacab
"On Sunday we were alerted by a resident of the Los Lagos area that they had seen 3 kids on horses and they thought that they may be for Bacab. We were just leaving from home when we came out and started looking to see if we see the horses to make sure that they were ours or not. We ended up finding them all the way into Ladyville nearly by the supermarkets. We caught one there and we caught the other 2 horses further down going almost by Williamson Industries old site. We had alerted the police already so the police had met us when we caught the first horse and they went down and chased the other 2 guys and brought them back, arresting all minors. From what we have been told is that they generally take these horses to Belize City and abuse them, run them to exhaustion and some of the horses die or are maimed. So it is a serious business when they are stealing livestock, it's a serious offence to rustle cattle, horses, sheep, goat or anything like that. People's livelihood depends on it and at Bacab for example we employ 50 people more or less and those are families that are supported from our horses that are rented for tours. If we don't have the use of our horses for that then that's revenue that won't be generated to feed families. We've been told stories that some horses have been taken into Belize City and are raced up and down where multitude of kids, one after the other, until the horse gets exhausted and dies."
According to Smith, the minors cut through Bacab's barbed wire fence to get to the horses. And apparently this is not the first incident like this the police have responded to. Commanding Officer, ACP Edward Broaster told us that his Belize District rural division has recently responded to two other reports of minor stealing horses or caught with horses in the Rural area.
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