Click the play button on the video window to the right to see the storyRIO VERDE, AZ -- Carrie Wright thought she was about to have a carefree, relaxing vacation when she travelled through the Grand Canyon to Havasupai Falls for Labor Day.
But just beyond the picturesque land was a scene she won't soon forget.
She snapped pictures of what she saw.
It was a landscape peppered with carcasses of starved horses ... and beyond that the weak skin barely covering the malnourished ribs of the ones who died.
"I was crying," she confessed outside her Rio Verde home, east of the Valley, Tuesday.
Her property is filled with rabbits, horses, and an oversized cow named Isabelle.
Wright said she has been an animal lover all her life and can't stand what she saw.
A Valley veterinarian, who didn't want her name used, said there is no other explanation but neglect for the condition of the horses.
She explained "when you see one horse underweight in a group, you can assume something is wrong with that one, but not when the whole group is like that."
She also saw the animals first hand and measures their poor condition on a number system.
"On a scale of 10, they were at about a one or two," the vet said.
The vet says she "felt depressed in such a beautiful place," on this vacation and she went on to suggest the animals be put up for public adoption.
As Wright says goodnight to Isabelle, she thinks of the condition of the horses she saw.
"I don't know if they made it through the night," she confesses. "It kills me, that nobody has done anything."
ABC15 made several calls to investigators in Northern Arizona.
Havasupai investigators on the reservation confirmed some horses had died, but added they were "not at liberty to discuss the deaths" and referred us to a criminal investigator assigned to the case.
ABC15 has not yet heard back from investigators.
