A Wyoming barrel racer was stunned to learn that the 17-year-old girl accused of stabbing three horses during a major rodeo event in Las Vegas over the weekend was the same rider who tried to borrow one of her horses.
“About a month ago, I got a message from a girl asking if I had a horse she could run,” said Lora Nichols of Pavillion. “I said no, and she kept asking about each of my specific horses.
“This weekend I looked to see if it was the same girl they arrested. It was! It makes my skin crawl to realize she was stalking my horses, too. It could have been me just as easily.”
Nichols, who has earned more than $400,000 competing on the half-brother brother of one of the stabbed horses, said she’s especially horrified by the attack.
Along with Nichols, Wyoming’s rodeo community is shocked and appalled by the Tonya Harding-like violent rampage that left the three barrel racing horses stabbed multiple times.
What Happened
Las Vegas police report that the 17-year-old barrel racer was arrested in connection the attack on the horses of competitors.
The girl is accused of stabbing each of the horses multiple times inside their stalls during
the NBHA Professional’s Choice Vegas Super Show at the South Point Equestrian Center.
The attack came just hours after one of the horses — a 6-year-old gelding named Saaul Good — had carried 20-year-old Hailey Krahenbuhl to a first-place paycheck of $1,805.
The horse, which Krahenbuhl calls “Sully,” has shattered arena records this season and racked up $238,388 in earnings in less than four years competing.
“Sully was stabbed multiple times last night,” Krahenbuhl posted to her Facebook page on Saturday. “I have no words. He is stitched up and in recovery.”
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department reports that officers received a report at around 2:07 a.m. Saturday that a horse had been injured inside a South Point barn.
When officers arrived, they learned three horses had been “intentionally injured with a sharp object” believed to be a knife, police say.
Veterinarians reportedly cleaned and sutured deep blade lacerations to Sully’s flank and shoulder.
Another competitor named Keira Weisbart confirmed on social media that her horse, Rocket, was stabbed three times and had other “stab attempts around his body.”
That horse was reportedly treated and released at the scene.
A third stabbed horse, however, underwent emergency surgery to repair muscle tissue damage.
Detail’s Ordeal
Southern California barrel racer Arielle Phillips owns that third horse, a mare she calls Detail was stabbed multiple times.
In extensive social media posts, Phillips described the arrested teen as “a crazy obsessed stalker who has been following me on social media for a long time, obsessing over Detail, obsessing over meeting me.”
Phillips said she’d arrived back at the South Point barn to find the suspect hosing off Detail’s wounds.
“Cameras verified her entering our stalls,” wrote Phillips. “I can’t even put into words the pain I feel for my mare and for Hailey’s Sully.”
She said the attack has also affected her horse.
“Detail is traumatized,” Phillips wrote. “Every time she runs away from the approach of my hand, I burst into tears. This is my best friend. An innocent sweet horse was brutally tortured for no reason.”
While all three horses are expected to recover, they are sidelined for the near future and aren’t able to compete.
Champion Lineage
Krahenbuhl, the daughter of a Las Vegas landscaper who grew up about 15 minutes from The Strip, had plans to hit the rodeo road with Sully — whose sire Winner’s Version has produced earners of more than $7 million — and make an NFR run in 2027.
“We were a match from the beginning and my dreams became reality, all thanks to him,” she wrote prior to the attack from Globe Life Field during the $3 million American Rodeo.
Hailey and her sister launched a GoFundMe campaign to help with at veterinary for all three of the horses.
Nichols said she knows those other girls and is heartbroken for them and their horses.
“I’ve competed alongside Hailey a lot, and she’s an amazing human being,” said Nichols. “I think of the raw emotion and just the blood, sweat and tears she’s put in — you know, how hard she’s worked to get there.
“When I heard it was her horse, I was just sick to my stomach.”
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, detectives located the suspect at a nearby hotel and took her into custody.
“She was transported to Clark County Juvenile Hall, where she was booked on 12 counts of willful or malicious killing, maiming or torturing of an animal and three counts of felony malicious destruction of private property over $5,000,” investigators told KTLA 5 Morning News.
Because of her age, official law enforcement sources have not identified the suspected publicly.
Veteran barrel racers have over the years heard rare rumors of winning horses being poisoned, but a brazen rash of stabbings is a first.
Nichols said the incident makes her think of a made-for-TV movie in which the stalker ends up booked for murder.
She’s also grateful the suspect wasn’t targeting the girls themselves.
“I just think we’re sheltered from that so much in our world,” added barrel racer and Gillette College rodeo coach racer Casey Rae Sellers. “The youth in our industry are pretty dang good kids. This is so out-of-character for the Western industry.”
