Rush-hour motorists on Wauconda’s busiest roadway managed to avoid a catastrophe Tuesday morning after being confronted with a most unusual roadway hazard — a runaway horse that was in the midst of galloping its way across town.
“It’s not every day that you see a horse running down Route 12,” Wauconda Police Chief David Wermes said.
Wermes added that the Police Department has posted two dashboard-camera videos of the runaway horse on its Facebook page, garnering more than 150,000 and 60,000 views, respectively.
The first video shows the white horse trotting down a roadway. After a few minutes, during which the officer in his patrol car follows the horse onto a sidewalk, the action moves back to neighborhood side streets, where a small white dog runs out of its yard as if it is going to chase the horse, then stops in the middle of the street in front of the squad car and looks back at the officer.
“It was a little ankle-biter, and it looked back at the officer with a look (like), ‘What do you want me to do?'” Wermes said.
The chief said the department had to edit the videotape audio, because officers were loudly saying things like warning the horse to not go onto Route 176 and “No, no, no don’t go up to Route 12,” he said.
Alix Keelan of McHenry said she was heading to her job as a technician at Grayslake’s Village Veterinarian Clinic when she saw a lot of police cars with their emergency lights activated near routes 176 and 12.
“Then all of a sudden, I see a horse,” she said. “It went up the off-ramp on (Route) 12, and all the police jumped in their cars.”
Keelan added that she did a U-turn under the bridge and gave chase to the police squads chasing the horse. At one point, she said, she was next to the horse and yelled “whoa, whoa, stop” out the window of her truck. She added that the horse stopped and then started backing up, so she got out of her truck and approached.
“The cars were kind of lined up blocking the horse from going southbound. As I ran, I took off my (pink) sweatshirt so I could put it around the horse’s neck,” she said.
Just as she did that, another citizen jumped in to help.
Nick Willis of Johnsburg, who works at the nearby Trees R Us on Route 12, brought a ratchet strap to put around the horse’s neck.
“Police stopped northbound traffic, and we walked her over to the tree place because it was fenced in. She was really sweet,” Keelan said, referring to the 10-year-old mare that was picked up by the owner, though Keelan added the owner never revealed the horse’s name.
According to police, the horse came from a stable near Garland and Gossell roads, but a person who answered the telephone at Light Farms on Thursday said they could not talk at that time.
Wermes said the stable wasn’t being very cooperative, because it was a client’s horse and while there was humor in the situation, it was also potentially dangerous.
“We were really concerned about it, and that’s why we had all our squads there. We worried because it was rush hour,” he said.
“We just want to thank Alix and Nick for helping us out. They really helped minimize the situation,” Wermes added. “Something bad could have happened with gapers and someone running into the rear end of someone else.”
Police also put a note on the department’s Facebook page addressed to the two civilians: “Thank you to Nick Willis and Alix Keelan for their assistance wrangling the horse.”
