Waitarere Beach trainer Brendon MCDermott was left standed at the beach after his float was stolen.
Waitarere Beach trainer Brendon MCDermott was left standed at the beach after his float was stolen.
A thoroughbred racehorse and its rider were left stranded at Waitarere Beach yesterday morning after theives brazenly stole a horse float while they were getting their daily early-morning exercise.
The theft has left horse trainer Brendan McDermott fuming. Until he can find a suitable replacement float, he is facing the prospect of turning his small team of racehorses out for a spell.
“They’ve wrecked it,” he said.
“I’m screwed until I can get another float.”
McDermott, 53, had been exercising horses along the beach for almost 30 years and had never had a problem. He would always park his float in the carpark near the surf club and walk a short distance to the water.
CCTV footage showed McDermott arriving at the beach yesterday morning with a horse at 6.17am. That same camera footage given to Police shows the same bright red horse float leaving the beach less than 15 minutes later being towed by a light blue Nissan wagon.
Police received a tip-off later that morning that led to an arrest and the horse float was located at an address less than a kilometre from McDermott’s house and stables.
But by the time Police arrived half an hour later, the float had been gutted, stripped of its interior padding. The roof was removed, as were the alloy wheel rims and LED lights. What was left had been given a white coat of paint to hide the original red colour.
A float belonging to Waitarere Beach horse trainer Brendon McDermott was stolen while he was riding his horse along the beach.
McDermott, who builds trailers for a living, estimated the cost of repair was in the neighbourhood of $20,000. It was insured for $13,000 but the matter could take weeks to sort out.
“It’s beyond repair, put it that way,” he said.
It would take time to work through the insurance claim and he feared it wouldn’t be easy to find a reasonably-priced float of the same quality.
In the meantime, his small team of horses are in the paddock eating grass. It’s a setback for two horses especially, who were fit and ready to race. He had been offered a float to use by a neighbour, for which he was grateful, but there was no head division at the front of the float and one horse tried to turn around, risking injury.
It took time and money to get a racehorse fit for raceday and any setbacks had a monetary cost that was hard to quantify.
“It’s pissed me off,” he said.
“It affects my horses. It affects their owners. They’re going to lose out.
“The people doing this sort of thing don’t seem to have a concept of the inconvenience and the cost. They just don’t care.”
McDermott said while he had never had a problem in 28 years, he had always put a small lock on the trailer before trotting off down the beach. It saddened him to think he would need to invest in a wheel clamp from now on and fit it every morning.
“We do have security at home, but obviously when you are out in public you can only do so much,” he said.
