RIVERVIEW — Mulata is lying on her right side.
A swarm of flies buzzes around the horse’s corpse. Her face is frozen in a grimace. Her legs are still with rigor mortis.
Giraldo Leon, who works at this small farm on 66th Street in Riverview, Shakes his head as he walks past the dead animal he considered “part of my family.”
He stops, pointing at the black wound in her left side from the bullet that killer her.
“A shame,” he says of the 5-year-old who also was called Negra, for the brownish-black color of her coat. “We’ve been here for 16 years. Never had any problems.”
Stepping past piles of manure left by the horses and cows and bulls who share this field, Leon, toting a black Polaroid camera, walks to a small pen, to the limping brown horse named Francisco Danny, a 2-year-old quarter horse who was shot just below the right hind knee, now bandaged.
Leon, a short man in a white cowboy hat, pats the wounded horse and then shoots a few photographs.
Francisco Danny, he says, might not live to see the weekend.
The bullet, Leon says matter-of-factly, is in a bad place for a horse.
An operation might not be possible. Francisco Danny might have to be destroyed.
“I hope they catch whoever did this,” he says.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office is trying.
Deputies are searching for a silver Lincoln Continental or a Ford Crown Victoria.
“This appears to be a random crime,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Debbie Carter says. “A witness reported seeing the silver vehicle in the area just before the incident.”
According to the sheriff’s office, a witness said that about 4:20 p.m. Sunday, the car turned off 66th Street, a country lane off Madison Avenue, and drove down a long dirt driveway running next to the fence that keeps the animals from wandering.
Someone inside the car fired five or six shots, one hitting Mulata, one hitting Francisco Danny. The vehicle then sped off.
The witness, who is not being identified, could not say who did the shooting or what kind of weapon was used. One neighbor, Vidal Gonzalez, says he heard a rapid burst of fire.
“I heard a whole bunch of shots like an automatic gun,” Gonzalez says. “It could be a rifle or a gun, but there were to many shots at the same time.”
Leon is soon joined by Feliciano Morales, who manages the farm, and by two people from the county, the sheriff’s agricultural crimes officer and the county medical examiner.
The medical examiner has arrived to perform a necropsy, the animal version of an autopsy.
“We’re hoping the medical examiner’s office can help us retrieve the bullet,” agricultural crimes Officer McCullough says. That will enable us to do some ballistics testing if we can find a suspect.”
McCullough adds that crimes such as this are rare.
Like Leon, Morales is worried about Francisco Danny.
“He is still alive but is limping badly,” Morales says. “His leg is broken, and he is in a lot of pain. The bone is completely broken, and there may be no way to take care of it. This is very sad.”
Morales’ neighbors are angry.
“I just don’t understand why people are shooting at animals,” says Vidal Gonzalez, adding that he is worried about his 13 cows and three horses.
By Monday afternoon, Francisco Danny’s future seems to brighten.
Another veterinarian has arrived to take him to a shadier and quieter farm. Leon says the horse is putting eight on his wounded leg, a good sign.
Watching the horse struggle to walk angers the ranch hand.
“There is no reason for anyone to do this,” he says with disgust. “Someone just killed an animal for amusement, just to see it fall.”
