City tells feds to move dead horse dumped too close to road

Carson City Health Department officials said a horse dumped at the top of Sedge Road a mile from homes needs to be moved.

"I went out there to look at it today and it is too close to the road," said Kevin McCoy, senior compliance officer.

McCoy said he contacted the Bureau of Land Management and they've agreed to send someone out today to move the dead stallion.

On Sunday night, Margie Quirk who lives on Deer Run Road, called the Carson City dispatch after seeing the horse lying dead near Morgan Mill Road, the apparent victim of a hit-and-run accident.

"Monday afternoon on my way to work it was gone. I didn't hear another thing about it until I was out riding my horse Wednesday," she said.

Quirk said that as she reached the top of the unpaved Sedge Road, she saw the same horse lying about 100 feet to the south.

According to Elaine Briggs, assistant field manager for the Carson City Field Office of the BLM, workers collected the animal and left it at the top of Sedge Road per department policy.

"If a horse dies on a major roadway, we drag it off to where it's not on a major roadway. If it dies out in the middle of nowhere, that's where we leave it," she said. "We've left other horses up there before."

But, Quirk argued and McCoy agreed, this horse was lying in the open and hard to miss once you hit Sedge's summit about a mile from Deer Run Road.

"I'm pretty disappointed that they didn't take it out to the landfill where they have a dead animal disposal. That was a beautiful horse that we used to see roaming free, and now I have to see it lying there dead," Quirk said.

Neighbor Dee Ramsey said she was stunned by the apparent callousness of the disposal.

"It's disconcerting. I'm riding my horse up Sedge and there he is in plain view with his feet in the air. Everybody in this neighborhood goes up that road," she said. "I'd have paid for them to take him to the landfill if I had known they were going to dump him like that."

Homeowner Michelle Miller was just plain mad - mad that an apparent speeder never reported killing the horse and mad that the BLM left the full-grown stud where everyone could see.

"I think it's a bad policy. I think to leave a rotting carcass in the open air next to a recreation road is a bad policy," she said. "It's within walking distance to homes."

• Contact reporter F.T. Norton at ftnorton@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1213.