BOISE, Idaho — The search is on for a person who shot and killed a horse in Parma.
“He is the type of horse that if someone drives up on the side of the road where he was pastured, he would walk up to the fence and say hi, and somebody shot him,” Horse owner Debbie Rudolph said.
She doesn't understand why someone would shoot and kill her horse, Jazz.
“We've been racking our brains to see if anybody had it out for our family,” Rudolph said.
On July 28, someone shot and killed Jazz at the family's horse ranch at night. The ranch borders the road.
“I don't think there's any excuse for this, it was senseless and that's not right,” Rudolph said. “Parma is a ranching community you can’t just go out and shoot people's animals in the field, I want to know who it is, I want them prosecuted.”
Now, Crime Stoppers and the Canyon County Sheriff's Office are working to find out who did this.
“This isn't the first Crime Stoppers case that we've had when it comes to the killing of an animal, sometimes it's a dog or a cat, and in this case it's a horse,” Crime Stoppers Law Enforcement Coordinator Ted Arnold said. “The fact is, you can't do that.”
The organization is offering a reward of up to $1,000 to anyone who offers a tip that leads to the arrest of the person behind this.
“Right now, there are no suspects or leads in this case of animal cruelty, the most severe kind,” Arnold said.
The family is also offering a separate $1,000 reward.
But even if they're rewarded with the answers they're looking for, it won't erase Debbie’s last memory of Jazz, laying in the pasture, as his son Ted stood guard over his body.
“When we hauled Jazz out of the pasture, Ted just stared at the gate and he was just calling, they don't understand, that he's never coming back and that's why I want to offer the reward. I want to find who did this,” Rudolph said.
Killing a horse is a misdemeanor, unless it is the second or more conviction for animal cruelty in a 15-year period, according to Crime Stoppers.
If anyone knows anything about this, contact Crime Stoppers at 208-343-COPS (2677).