24/10/2026

There will be no trial over the deaths of the four horses shot with a rifle in Tarquinia on 28 March 2024. Two of them were barely more than foals. In an order filed on 22 October 2026, the preliminary investigations judge (GIP) of the Court of Civitavecchia dismissed the case and rejected the objection filed by IHP. The judge agreed with the Public Prosecutor, who in December 2025 had requested dismissal of the case against the two veterinarians under investigation for killing animals.

What happened

On 27 March 2024, shortly after midday, four horses were spotted on the verge of Strada dell’Acquetta, heading towards the SS1 Aurelia bis highway. Police steered them into a nearby field. In the afternoon a veterinarian from the local health authority (ASL) arrived but was unable to get close to them. That same day the mayor signed Order no. 4/2024, which required the animals to be captured using sedation and housed in suitable facilities, and allowed them to be put down only as a last resort to protect public safety.

On the morning of 28 March, from 9:30 a.m., the Highway Police, the Carabinieri Forestry Unit, the Municipal Police and the veterinarian responsible for remote darting were on site. After a drone survey and a first approach by car, one horse was hit by a tranquilliser dart, but the drug took effect late and only partially. Three further shots missed. The veterinarian’s report attributed the failure to strong wind and the animals’ agitation. Three riders then tried to contain the horses, also without success. The four horses were then shot. Only afterwards, when their microchips were read, did it emerge that two of them were registered mares belonging to a local breeder.

The judge’s reasoning

The judge did not dispose of the case hastily. Across the eleven pages of the order, he examines each of the issues we raised: the absence of imminent danger; contradictions between the accounts of those present; the use of the drone and the car; the drugs and doses used; the failure to provide mobile fencing, transport and a facility to house the animals; the decision not to stop traffic; and our requests for an independent veterinary assessment and for all those present to be heard.

On some points the judge acknowledges that our observations had merit, at least at the organisational level. He accepts that the case file does not identify the vehicle that would have been used to transport the animals or the facility that was meant to receive them. He finds that the veterinarian’s decision to leave the partially sedated horse to fetch ropes and halters “may be viewed critically from an organisational standpoint.” And he concludes that the organisational shortcomings identified by the associations are, at least in part, not without substance.

According to the judge, however, this is not enough. Article 544-bis of the Italian Criminal Code punishes anyone who kills an animal out of cruelty or without necessity. In the GIP’s view, the manner of the killing rules out cruelty, and necessity was present: when the decision was taken, the danger to people travelling on nearby roads was real and immediate, the attempts at sedation and capture had failed, and no immediate and effective alternative was available. The fact that the operation could have been better organised, the judge writes, does not amount to proof that the killing took place without necessity.

We disagree

We respect the decision and the judge’s work. We accept it, but with regret and bitterness, because we reach a different conclusion on precisely the decisive point.

In our view, the necessity on which the dismissal rests was itself the result of the containment choices made during the operation. The horse is a prey animal: when it feels threatened, it flees. Approaching with a car or a drone, a dart that only partially sedates, an animal left alone while it recovers, three riders trying to contain an already frightened group: all of this can heighten agitation and, with it, the tendency to bolt towards the roads. That is the very danger that was ultimately invoked to justify the killing.

Some of the solutions the order treats as abstract hypotheses, such as luring the animals with food, identifying the herd leader or enclosing the area with mobile fencing, are in fact well-known techniques to anyone who works with horses and understands their behaviour. In our view their weight was not fully assessed: not as alternatives to be tried at the last minute, but as choices that, had they been made from the start, could have prevented things from ever reaching that point.

Proper training is needed

Those in public institutions who have to deal with animals such as horses, from police forces and ASL veterinarians to the magistrates called upon to assess their conduct, must be able to rely on proper knowledge of these animals’ nature and behaviour. This is the precondition for acting professionally and for ensuring that decisions this serious and irreversible are not taken again in the future.

We therefore call on the relevant institutions to promote training in the non-lethal management of equids, and we renew our request to the Ministry of Health for national rules on free-roaming equids, which are currently left to orders issued by individual mayors. After two formal meetings with the Ministry’s Directorate-General, nothing has followed.

Read also
Horses killed in Tarquinia: IHP opposes dismissal of the case (January 2026)