Pregnant Horse Fatally Stabbed In Bellevue -- No Suspects In Brutal Death Of Arabian In Front Yard Of Bridle Trails-Area Home

BELLEVUE - When John Roche found his family's Arabian horse lying on the front lawn of his home yesterday, he thought she had died in a miscarriage.

Baby Face was due to deliver her first foal within a month.

But when Roche found a 4-foot wooden stake with blood on its tip a few yards from her carcass, he knew someone had killed the 8-year-old mare.

"I have a hard time believing anyone would do this on purpose to a horse," he said. "But this was no accident."

Bellevue police also think someone stabbed Baby Face but have no suspects, Capt. Bill Ferguson said.

She was killed sometime after 11:30 p.m. Saturday, when the Roches' 16-year-old son saw her grazing in the family's Bridle Trails-area yard with Troubles, their pinto pony.

Roche found Troubles hovering over Baby Face's carcass around 8:30 a.m. yesterday.

A trail of blood led 100 yards to the stable she and Troubles shared. Roche said blood splattered on the wall next to where Baby Face usually stands led investigators to believe the stabbing occurred there.

The stable gate's metal tie was undone, Roche said, "and I lock it every night."

Baby Face probably lived up to four hours after she was stabbed in the underbelly in the femoral artery, a major blood vessel going to the legs, said veterinarian Larry Pickering, who examined her carcass.

Roche said he turned on his bedroom fan about 10:30 p.m. to dim the noise from a teenage party next door and never heard any other noises. He said his bedroom is on the opposite side of the house from the corral.

One neighbor told him there was a commotion about 12:30 a.m., but that could have come from people leaving the party.

Whoever stabbed her used great force, as the stake went through about 10 inches of skin hide and flesh, Pickering said.

Before Baby Face's pregnancy, the Roches frequently rode her around their 3-acre property and nearby Bridle Trails State Park.

"We were getting real excited about the baby," said Adairre Roche, John Roche's wife.

"She was just a real friendly, real mellow horse. She never hurt anybody."

The equestrian trails for which the Roches' neighborhood was named have been the subject of controversy in recent years.

Last year, Bellevue and Kirkland designated some areas around Bridle Trails State Park, east of Interstate 405 near Northeast 60th Street, as equestrian districts, encouraging the maintenance of trails, some of which have been there since the 1940s.

The Roches have been involved in a legal dispute over land just north of their yard, which they say should be a public trail for horses.

"People move to a neighborhood named for horse trails, but they don't want horse trails or horses here," Adairre Roche said.

John Roche believes Baby Face's death ties in with that controversy.

"It's too coincidental," he said.

Don Krebs, member of a Compton Green neighborhood group that successfully sought to keep the Roches' neighborhood from being declared an equestrian district, disagreed.

"I'm sorry about what happened to the horse," Krebs said. "It's awful. But I don't think it had anything to do with the trails."

The death of Baby Face is an ugly reminder of the killing of Pasado, a Kelsey Creek Park donkey that was tortured and strangled six years ago, said Kathryn Taylor, president of the King County Executive Horse Council, which promotes the maintenance of local horse trails.

"We'll be saying, `Remember Pasado, and remember this horse,' " Taylor said. "We want whoever did this to be caught, and we don't want this to happen again."

Seattle Times Eastside bureau reporter Louis T. Corsaletti contributed to this report. Janet Burkitt's phone message number is 206-515-5689. Her e-mail address is: jbur-new@seatimes.com