NEWS
Trial for veterinarian accused of injecting horses with vodka postponed
Posted: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 8:46 PM
The trial for a Nebraska veterinarian accused of injecting horses with vodka in hopes of calming them down before a race was postponed on Wednesday and rescheduled for March 29.
Hall County Attorney Mark Young told the Grand Island, Nebraska, Independent that the trail for Jay Stewart, D.V.M., was postponed because there were too many witnesses for the one-hour time frame allotted for the trial.
Stewart, the president of the Nebraska Veterinary Medical Association who works as a private practitioner at the state’s five Thoroughbred tracks, faces four misdemeanor counts of attempting to influence a race by tampering with horses in 2005. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of $5,000 and one year in jail.
Stewart said he is innocent.
He allegedly administered vodka shots on four occasions in 2005 at Fonner Park in Grand Island. Stewart also allegedly injected 93 horses with vodka shots during an eight-month period that concluded in September 2005, according to medication logs obtained by the Associated Press.
Dennis Oelschlager, the executive secretary of the Nebraska State Racing Commission, said the only medication veterinarians are allowed to administer on race day is furosemide. He said alcohol is “referred to as something that will calm [horses] down before a race.”
“I’m not aware of any jurisdiction that does routine testing for alcohol. There’s not to my knowledge a test out there,” Oelschlager said. “If we tell the lab, ‘Check this sample for alcohol’ they run special instrumental testing specifically for it and they can detect it.
“But in terms of a screening test, I am not aware of that being possible at this time.”
