Horses run loose in Riverbank after stolen vehicle crashes through pasture

Riverbank Police Services deputies were dispatched to two calls about 7 a.m. Saturday: a report of a stolen vehicle that crashed through a fence and a report of four horses wandering around a residential neighborhood.

It turned out the two were related.

The fence through which the stolen vehicle crashed bordered the horses’ pasture off Claus Road, according to Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Jon McQueary. As the driver fled on foot northeast toward Riverbank High School, the horses made a run for it through the new hole in the back of their pasture.

The animals went down some aptly named roads near their pasture, Canter Drive and Colt Way, before reaching the busy intersection of Claus and Kentucky Avenue.

They headed east on Kentucky, crossing Claus, then north on Central Avenue, McQueary said. He’d followed the horses while waiting for the owners to respond to the scene, and an area resident brought hay to help him coax the horses off the road and into a field.

The owners arrived and, after chasing the horses around the field for a bit, got all but one of them in bridles. A bridle wasn’t available for the fourth horse, but after he saw his buddies being loaded into a waiting trailer, he cooperated and got in, too.

The stolen vehicle, a Ford Explorer, belongs to Jose Machuca and his father, who was warming it up in front of their home before work. Machuca said he heard the vehicle being driven away from the home.

He and his brothers went looking for the Ford and found it in the pasture.

The person who stole it has not been located.

This story was originally published January 28, 2017 at 12:46 PM with the headline "Horses run loose in Riverbank after stolen vehicle crashes through pasture."