Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Pasco horse strays from stable, killed in car crash

No one knows how the horse from the Starkey Ranch got on State Road 54. A driver didn't see him until it was too late.

By JAMAL THALJI
Published September 9, 2006

ODESSA - Kids loved J.J., and the feeling was mutual. The Starkey Ranch's 5-year-old gelding had a gentle nature perfect for children riding horseback.

"He was really sweet and had a wonderful disposition," said general manager Rhonda Robinson. "He was adored by the kids."

Now J.J. will be mourned. The horse was killed early Wednesday by a vehicle on State Road 54 west of Gunn Highway, the Florida Highway Patrol said. The driver didn't see J.J. until it was too late.

No one knows how J.J. ended up on the roadway. They just know something spooked J.J. and his fellow trail horses so badly they stampeded out of their stable and rammed a big metal gate so hard it landed 10 feet from its hinges.

Then J.J. somehow got outside the stable's fence and into the roadway, where he died about 4 a.m.

Brian Hubbard, 34, of Trinity was headed east in a 2005 Toyota when J.J. appeared in his path.

"It was a dark horse," said FHP spokesman Larry Coggins Jr., "and the roadway is dark out there."

Hubbard's vehicle was totaled, the horse killed instantly. Hubbard was driving the speed limit, wore his seatbelt and was uninjured, Coggins said, and is not at fault in the accident.

The ranch provides horses for J.B. Starkey's Flatwoods Adventures, named for the scion of one of Pasco's ranching dynasties. The historic ranch was founded in 1937, and Robinson said nothing like this has ever happened there before - though no one's exactly sure what happened in the first place.

"We have no idea," she said.

[Last modified September 9, 2006, 06:36:59]