“We are very sad to report this evening that Donner (b 2023) was found deceased today. He sustained injuries consistent with fighting with another stallion, including a broken neck. While it is devastating to lose a healthy, young horse from the herd, this is what it means to be wild and free.”

“This kind of behavior may seem brutal to us, but it is a natural part of healthy herd dynamics. This colt’s death should serve as a reminder of just how fragile life can be for these horses. They face so many natural challenges to their survival; there is no guarantee that every foal will make it to adulthood, even under the best circumstances. We can’t control nature (and we wouldn’t want to) but we can control our own actions. Please give the horses plenty of space, never feed them, and be a good steward of the environment. Donner’s life was short, but it was wild from start to finish.”

“That is something to be celebrated, even as we grieve. Rest peaceful and free, young man. We will miss you,” says a Facebook post from the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, an Outer Banks, North Carolina-based conservancy dedicated to protecting the islands’ hoofed herds from external threats.

But evidently not internal ones as Donner’s killer still trots around, free from impunity and emboldened to do it again and again and again until he’s the only male left, leaving him free to lord over all the island’s fillies like a cheap cult leader with no reason to ever leave his decrepit rural compound. They can’t just count on some NYPD patrol horse being driven down to Florida to work the Super Bowl crowd detail gets into some crazy accident and his trailer goes over the side of a bridge on I-95 during a storm so then he washes up on the shore of the island and suddenly finds himself being the only horse who can deliver justice to that murderous son of a bitch. That kind of stuff only happens in imaginary movies about heroic horse cops that will never be produced.