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You are here: Home / Politics / America / Late Evening Open Thread: Floriduh Woman! And the Horse She Rode In On Too!

Late Evening Open Thread: Floriduh Woman! And the Horse She Rode In On Too!

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After one drink too many, a four-legged animal might seem a better option than a four-wheeled vehicle.

But sadly for one Florida woman, the police did not agree – arresting her on Thursday for “drunk-driving” a horse.

Donna Byrne, 53, was arrested in Polk City, central Florida, for “DUI on a horse,” the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said Friday.

Byrne is also accused of animal neglect for failing to provide proper protection for the horse, placing it at risk of injury or death while riding it along the busy road.

According to police, who were called by a passerby, Byrne appeared intoxicated when officers arrived on the scene.

“Ms Byrne was obviously not in any condition to be on the road. She not only put herself and the horse in danger, but also anyone who was driving on the road, which is typically very busy,” Sheriff Grady Judd said.

The horse was taken to a sheriff’s office animal shelter.

I really don’t want to know what this is referring to:

Byrne is also accused of animal neglect for failing to provide proper protection for the horse, placing it at risk of injury or death while riding it along the busy road.

Remember folks friends don’t let friends drink and canter.

Reader Interactions

76Comments

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    What if you’re sober and the horse is drunk? Is that legal?

    (only if the horse is over 21, I suppose)

  3. 3.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Byrne is also accused of animal neglect for failing to provide proper protection for the horse, placing it at risk of injury or death while riding it along the busy road.

    It may be the only part that makes sense.

  11. 11.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    In California, FedEx and UPS drivers are required by law to refuse to deliver a shipment of wine to anyone who appears to be intoxicated at the time of the delivery. My boss belongs to a wine club, and the boxes always have a big notification sticker on them.

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: I will update the Balloon Juice files on this matter. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. As well as outing your boss as a lush. I’m sure he’ll be very pleased during your annual review.

  15. 15.

    J R in WV

    Last time we were in NOLA, we flagged a cab to the restaurant we were going to have dinner at. As he took off, there was a clank as his bottle of beer fell into the well below the door.

    Not only in FL…

  16. 16.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:
    This guy is pretty hard core though, my mail is delivered at 10-11 every morning. Is he drunk before the sun rises over the yardarm?
    Although it is possible he’s just still drunk from the night before. Or he could be like a couple of guys I used to know. One I used to get a ride to high school with. Just after we arrived in the school parking lot he’d pull out a bottle of jack from under the front seat and take a big slug. It made me a bit nervous but he seemed sober before that. Of course that was before the E6 stationed on the ship I was on, who was one of the nicest guys you’d ever know. Till one time we were out to sea for over 4 weeks straight and he sobered up. What a fucking asshole. People were looking for hidden bottles hoping to find one to leave for him.

  20. 20.

    trollhattan

    “The Right Stuff” chronicles Chuck Yeager drunk-crashing his horse the night before breaking the sound barrier, so clearly a proud tradition of equestrian inebriation exists among the horsie set.

  22. 22.

    Maeve

    My great-great-grandfather died in a drunk driving accident when he fell off his horse returning from the pub. This was in Ireland ??

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ruckus:

    Till one time we were out to sea for over 4 weeks straight and he sobered up.

    Clearly, someone failed at their job in the Navy. I thought a daily ration of rum was traditional.

  26. 26.

    some guy

    as both my kids will be competing in an English competition in Ocala in the morning, I assume this will be as lit there as it is on my FB feed.

  27. 27.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Maeve: Culturally acceptable. I’ll allow it.//

    Also, provided you’re not being sarcastic as well: my sincerest condolences.

  32. 32.

    some guy

    upon learning my son’s dog was still dead (shot on Halloween night by Florida Man) and that the local gendarme and the local Animal Control Services was still only interested in making sure I understood (COMPLY!!!) that the $150 ticket from Saturday for Katie eating a rabbit was still applicable, I was extremely underwhelmed. thankfully Big Dude’s horse coach/trainer yesterday and today kept his mind on task, ready for tomorrow’s competition. hats off to Kristen for getting it,and for helping him work through his pain by prepping Nellie for the English show.

    fuck Florida Man and his guns and his cowardice and his stupidity.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @some guy: I’m very sorry for what happened. I’m not sure where you’re at in the state, but if you’re considering getting another dog, the Suncoast Animal Shelter in Clearwater, FL just brought in a couple of hundred lost, stray, and/or abandoned animals from Puerto Rico that are going to need new, good homes.

  34. 34.

    Maeve

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Obviously I never knew him. Nor did my grandfather from whom I heard the story. I did see the newspaper clipping. Dated somewhere in the 1890s I believe. Saved as a family relic. i don’t believe it mentioned alcohol being involved but it could be inferred and my grandfather readily admitted it

  35. 35.

    some guy

    @Adam L Silverman:

    both of our dogs were adopted as pups (sisters from the same abandoned litter) here in Florida, from the same Animal Services shelter I reported Katie as “missing” to the day after Florida Man shot her.

  36. 36.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mnemosyne:
    It was a tradition in Britain’s Royal Navy, as I recall, but that ended in the 1970s. And a good thing, too: no one should ever give rum to a tot.

    @Mnemosyne:
    If I bought wine in a supermarket here, I’d get arrested. And the supermarket would get fined for selling it to me.

  40. 40.

    Anne Laurie

    Heck, drunken deliverymen were such a comic trope during the horse & carriage days that when motor vehicles started replacing them, there was a spin-off trope about the ‘modern tragedy’ when a milkman or ice-wagon driver could no longer count on his horse to walk him safely through his route! (And the last of those horse-drawn deliveries, in some cities, continued into living memory — I remember reading about the draft horses being recalled from retirement during WWII gas rationing.)

    Also, that line in Over the River: “the horse knows the way / to carry the sleigh / through the white and drifted snow… ” (unlike the sleigh passengers, who would’ve been imbibing anti-freeze in preparation for the trip, not to mention dealing with Grandma, the old besom).

  41. 41.

    Mike J

    @Amir Khalid:

    It was a tradition in Britain’s Royal Navy, as I recall, but that ended in the 1970s. And a good thing, too: no one should ever give rum to a tot.

    When my dad was in the US Navy in the 60s, flight crews still got a ration.

  47. 47.

    HuCat

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Over 30 years ago, in a Maryland county known as St Mary’s, a man was CONVICTED of riding a horse under the influence, as well as neglect, after the horse turned into traffic and was killed.

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    Adam, happen to see reporting on this?

    At the trilateral talks, Presidents Rouhani, Putin and Aliyev signed the Tehran Declaration, declaring their intent to develop three-way cooperation in fields including the long-awaited International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) which will connect Moscow to the Persian Gulf.

    Part of the plan is to build the INSTC, a 7,200-kilometre multimodal transport network. Using major junctions including Iran’s sole oceanic port of Chabahar, Tehran, Bandar Abbas, Bandar Anzali, Baku, Astrakhan and Moscow, it is to utilize sea, rail and road transit routes to connect Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, the South Caucasus, Russia and the Indian sub-continent. Source

    A guaranteed corridor to and from the Persian Gulf is kind of a big deal, as supposition demands consideration that it will enable implementation of a permanent Russian presence at the port. Not a formal base, of course, but there will have to be state-controlled warehouses and transport-related facilities (easily purposed for multiple uses). Also too, the port facilities provide not only basic but facile trans-shipment between India and Moscow.

  54. 54.

    Ruckus

    @Mike J:
    One of the officers on our destroyer thought that the starboard shaft was vibrating while we were in the north Atlantic so radio messages were sent and a Danish ship with a diver made it’s way to us to have a look see. After he came back aboard the medic broke out the stash and gave him a snort. There actually was drinking alcohol on board, for medicinal purposes. The diver sure didn’t seem to mind.

  61. 61.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: Not surprising at all. Russia has been telegraphing this for a while. It wants to replace the US as the de facto rule maker and great power hegemon in the region. It is happy to let the US do the hard work of defeating ISIS on the ground and then reaping the benefits once that happens.

  65. 65.

    Steve in the ATL

    @some guy: do all Nazis work at low level service jobs? What losers.

    ETA: this being the internet and all, I should have said “what loosers”

  70. 70.

    sm*t cl*de

    Remember folks friends don’t let friends drink and canter.

    Now you’re just shutting the stable gait after the horse has fled.

  71. 71.

    sm*t cl*de

    @some guy:

    nothing beats booing Nazis off the stage.

    My parents, and my father’s relatives in the old country, and my mother’s contacts in ‎ÚVOD, they were of a different opinion.

  74. 74.

    J R in WV

    Regarding booze in the US Navy, I’m relieved to know there was hidden away and locked up medicinal alcohol for use in an emergency! After a close call, a Dive in frozen waters, etc. One trip out to sea, I was standing watch on the bridge (amazing to me, but true) and overhear a Master at Arms tell the Officer of the Deck that sailors were smoking that marijuana back on the help pad and the fan tail. Shocking!!

    So I wasn’t shocked at all when a ship’s muster was called for before we started into Key West Naval Base. After the whole crew was mustered and accounted for, they began taking a couple of guys at a time to their berthing compartment to search everyone’s locker, looking for pot.

    By a strange coincidence they didn’t find a single sailor with pot in his locker – I suspect most of it was smoked the last night at sea, and the rest was put away in the tens of thousands of cubby holes on a ship the size of a tender. They did find bottles of booze in several senior enlisted men’s lockers, though. Much to my amusement.

    IIRC, we were returning from Charleston SC Naval Arsenal where we had unloaded all munitions, old 5″ shells, torpedoes, hand grenades Ma Deuce (.50 machine gun) ammo, M-1 Garand ammo, .45 pistol ammo, everything, prior to the ship entering a shipyard for overhaul and refit.

    There are so many shipboard fires during a yard overhaul they always unload all munitions to lessen the chance of losing a ship being worked on. We saw a huge fire on a ship across the bayou while we were in the yards, evidently a welder starting work in a space above a bilge that was full of fuel oil, instantly starting a raging inferno. Oops.

    But no alcohol on board, so that was safe!

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