Four taken to hospital after military horses
break loose in central London
Witnesses describe ‘total mayhem’ as horses – one of
them covered in blood – run through centre of city during rush hour
Caroline
Davies
Wed 24 Apr
2024 13.34 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/24/horses-on-loose-central-london
Four people
have been taken to hospital after several military horses broke loose during a
morning exercise and bolted through central London, colliding with vehicles.
Astonished
witnesses described “total mayhem” as the runaway horses, including one white
horse drenched in blood, ran through the rush-hour streets.
Two horses
were seen running in the road near Aldwych. One collided with a parked taxi
outside the Clermont Hotel in Buckingham Palace Road, smashing the windows of
the Mercedes people carrier. One horse also crashed into a parked doubledecker
tour bus, smashing the windscreen.
A group of
seven horses and six soldiers from the Household Cavalry based at Hyde Park
barracks were on an extended exercise in Belgravia on Wednesday at about 8.40am
when chaos erupted.
Four
service personnel were thrown from their horses and five of the animals got
loose. It is understood that three soldiers were assessed in hospital for their
injuries, which were not thought to be serious.
All of the
animals were eventually contained.
Two of the
horses were caught near Limehouse tunnel, about five miles away. Pictures and
videos shared on social media showed a black 4x4 with blue lights following two
of the horses between Tower Bridge and the tunnel.
The BBC
reported that that the noise of builders moving concrete in Belgravia might
have initially spooked the animals.
London
ambulance service said it had received three calls from separate locations
about the horses: the first at 8.25am of a person being thrown from a horse on
Buckingham Palace Road; the second two minutes later at nearby Belgrave Square
where two people were injured; and a third at 8.35am at the junction of
Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, with a fourth person taken to hospital.
One
witness, Roland, described the chaotic scenes near Victoria, saying: “I saw
horses come from the bus station in front of Victoria run around in a frenzy.
People were running around to avoid them – it was total mayhem.”
A bus
worker, named as Mahmood, said: “One of the horses bumped into a bus, then
everything got out of control. I saw two horses without riders gallop away. One
rider managed to calm his horse down. An ambulance went to assist another rider
who had been injured.”
A cab
driver, called Robbie, described how he narrowly avoided being hit: “I was just
outside Buckingham Palace on the Mall and heard loads of galloping and looked
behind and there were about three or four horses. Two of them were sprinting up
towards Trafalgar Square and there was a white one covered in blood as well,”
he told BBC Radio London.
“I looked
in the rear mirror and saw them coming right up behind me, and at the time I
had two punters in the back so I was worried about them. Luckily they swerved
towards the middle of the road and carried on, but they were going at some
speed.”
Another cab
driver, Sean, described seeing three horses gallop towards Buckingham Palace.
He told BBC
Radio London: “I pulled out of Buckingham Palace Road, there one of the riders
was on the road on his back being tended to. There was a Mercedes Vito parked
outside the Grosvenor Hotel with its side smashed in and covered in blood. All
the windows were smashed so I am guessing the white horse has hit that running
into it.”
Bashir
Aden, 48, a construction worker, told the Telegraph: “I saw a soldier falling
down into the street after the horse ran into a car. One of my colleagues
called the police. The man hit the floor hard, he was screaming in pain. You
could see blood all over the parked car.”
Megan
Morra, another witness, was walking to work between Buckingham Palace and
Victoria station at 8.35am when she saw police officers “running through the
street”, and another walking a “very bloody” black horse down the path. The
horse “appeared to have a head injury”.
“There was
a lot of blood,” she told BBC News. “I was a bit distressed to be honest,
looking at the poor horse.”
An army
spokesperson said: “A number of military working horses became loose during
routine exercise this morning. All of the horses have now been recovered and
returned to camp. A number of personnel and horses have been injured and are
receiving the appropriate medical attention.”
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