Four horses found dead in Goshen barn

By Frances Ruth Harris
GOSHEN — Four horses were found dead last Saturday in a barn at Argus Farms on Gate Schoolhouse Road in Goshen.
Officials from the town of Goshen and the Hudson Valley SPCA said the horses were trapped in the barn and had starved to death. The authorities were alerted by neighbors. The case is still under investigation.
The owner could not be reached for comment. Town Supervisor Doug Bloomfield declined to comment.
The story has since blown up on social media.
Kay Myruski of Brookfields Farm on Pulaski Highway in Goshen has worked for years to save horses from abuse. She told The Chronicle that she's never seen a community so outraged. She said she's absolutely disgusted.
"I never expected it from her," Myruski said of the farm's owner. "She is an intelligent woman."
"I can't believe someone can go from one end of the spectrum to the other," she continued. "What vet went to the farm? How come no one knows her? How come no one knew about the horses?"
She said not all of the horses received the same poor treatment.
"Why weren't all the horses starving?" she asked.
The owner's ex-boyfriend, Angel Garcia, told the Chronicle that he will do a deposition on what he knows. He said he had lived for years on the farm, where he was "pretty much the slave."
Garcia said the horses didn’t get fed on time. When he was away, he would ask his parents to check on the horses, and they would drive all the way in from Belleville, N.Y., to care for them.
“I want as far away from her as I can get now,” he said of the owner.
Myruski said that, to her, it's like child abuse.
"If we allow this to happen on a farm were hundreds pass by, then we have failed those animals," she said. "They should have been noticed and not cut from our radar. To me, it's like child abuse."