A chemically impaired person was spotted galloping on horseback back and forth through California traffic and forced the hand of police officials in Whittier, who were made to chase after them on Friday evening after the handler refused to listen to the commands from officers to rein in the horse and come to a stop.
Officers with the Whittier Police Department posted images of officers calmly escorting a brown horse to the station, where they secured the tired animal to a post near a water-filled barrel close by.
“That was our afternoon,” expressed officials with Whittier Police Department via social media. “A pursuit after a DUI on a horse!”
Authorities sated that the suspect in the DUI eventually gave up and was taken into custody, while the horse “received lots of love” from the team.
A report from KTLA expressed that the unidentified rider is currently slated to be slammed with charges in relation to driving under the influence for their equine escapades.
The code for the state of California states that whether an intoxicated person is operating a vehicle — which is defined as something that is either self-propelled or powered by something other than a person — “the person riding or driving an animal has all the rights and responsibilities applicable to the driver when it comes to the rules of the road.”
Despite how this reads, the California state code expressed excludes “those provisions which by their very nature can have no application,” which directly equates to whether someone drives a car or rides a horse, they are not allowed go past the 0.08% legal blood alcohol limit as mandated by law.
As reported by a local law firm out of California, the riding of a horse while past the 0.08% legal blood alcohol limit back and forth through traffic could also see additional charges to the tune of animal neglect for forcing the animal to be at risk and could end up going further up to and including the loss of custody for the horse.
