The Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office located a man riding a stolen horse who led them on a horse chase in the neighborhood near Lowrey Field. This was not a story from the Wild West, just part of a successful effort to get one man his horse back.
The LSO said they first learned about the horse Monday, when they got a call stating that a horse was tied up at the Cricket Court apartments on 58th. They got a second call that day from a man saying his horse, which was kept at a corral in south Lubbock, had been stolen. The descriptions of the horses in the two incidents matched: a carmello stud horse with a sock on the right hind leg.
Because the horse was initially spotted tied up, it was assumed to be a stray, which is why the sheriff’s office investigated, Lt. Bryan Taylor of LSO explained. But soon officers realized the tied-up horse could be the same one that went missing. Tuesday deputies were looking for the horse near those apartments when they saw the suspect, 18-year-old Jaylon Sapp riding the horse. The deputies followed Sapp who, LSO said led the deputies “on a little chase”, a chase that lasted, “maybe only a couple of blocks.”
Eventually deputies stopped Sapp in a field in front of the VA Outpatient Clinic on Avenue Q near 61st and arrested Sapp. He was booked into the Lubbock County Detention Center, charged with theft of livestock valued at less than $150,000 and with evading arrest.
The deputies returned the horse to it’s original owner, Taylor said.
Freddy Garcia, a Lubbock resident, watched the end of this event unfold. Garcia said he had just picked up his kids from school when his son noticed a horse surrounded by six sheriff’s vehicles. He thought someone was riding a horse and had been pulled over for a traffic ticket, so he started taking a video of the scene with a Facebook Live Stream. He figured his friends “would get a kick out of it.”
He said that some deputies were standing around the horse and others appeared to be looking back behind the building nearby. Garcia said he wasn’t surprised to learn the incident had been a chase, in fact his kids had predicted that might be the case.
“From where the police officers were in their trucks in the field to where the horse was, you could tell, it was a long ways so he sprinted pretty far,” Garcia said of Mr. Sapp.
In the video Garcia captured, a horse is standing by itself surrounded by several sheriff’s vehicles. Law enforcement officers appear to be convening together as well. Toward the end of the video the law enforcement officers and another man bring the horse toward a trailer.
“We were just tripping out because you see all those sheriff’s vehicles and that one horse and that one guy standing there,” Garcia said. He continued watching the scene until the horse had been loaded into a trailer.
Garcia said that it was a memorable incident to watch unfold, and he’s glad he was able to capture it.
“It’s not something that happens everyday in Lubbock, that you hear someone takes a horse for a joyride and takes off, most of the time you hear stolen cars, this is is definitely out of the norm,” he laughed.
The LSO said this is not the first time Sapp has been associated with a livestock-related crime, Taylor explained that the Sheriff’s Office has presented a case to the District Attorney’s Office in another instance where Sapp is charged with theft of a horse.
