A Las Vegas veterinarian has gone missing after he was accused of animal abuse.
Dr. Shawn Frehner is facing a criminal investigation after a woman alleged he abused her horse and shared a video that appears to show him kicking the horse. Now, he’s missing and several local agencies are looking for him in Nevada’s Lake Mead area.
“The search for a missing individual at Lake Mead National Recreation Area remains ongoing,” a National Park Service spokesperson told The Independent. “The National Park Service is leading this multi-agency effort, with support from the Nevada Department of Wildlife, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, and volunteers from Red Rock Search and Rescue.”
Last week, Shawna Gonzalez paid Frehner to give her horse anesthetic shots. But when he was treating the horse, Gonzalez alleges he kicked and choked the animal. Video she took of the incident shows Frehner apparently kicking the horse in the chin.
“I heard [my mother] yell, ‘Oh my God. He just kicked him,’” Gonzalez told local outlet KTLA.
“He rapped the horse around his neck three times, and he kicked him in the head,” Gonzalez added. “My daughter picked up the phone and hit record, and that’s when she got him on videotape, kicking him.”
Gonzalez says Frehner then left her property before the horse was standing again.
Frehner “left my property before my horse was even up,” Gonzalez told KTLA. “My horse was still down for a good 45 minutes after he left, and before he left, there [where] several people that were there, and even they can state that he was kind of in a rush off my property.”
Frehner denied that he purposely abused the animal in a social media post after Gonzalez shared the video online.
“I did not blatantly haul off and kick this horse as it appears in the video. That was not my intention at all,” Frehner wrote, according to KTLA. “It was done simply to get the horse in a better position so that he could breathe and get up and move so I could again try to anesthetize.”
He added: “But yes I did kick him right in the chin and I very much do apologize and wish this never happened.”
Gonzalez filed charges against Frehner with the Nye County Sheriff’s Office, KTLA reports.
The office later confirmed that the vet is the subject of an investigation related to charges of felony animal abuse, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Frehner remains still missing while aerial, marine and ground personnel search for him near the country’s largest reservoir.
Frehner’s friend, Las Vegas resident Dania Spor-Orellana, told the Review-Journal she feels “there’s a lot more to this story that’s not being told.”
“I hope and pray that they find him and that he’s OK … everything else will work itself out,” she added.
Anyone who was in the Hemenway Harbor Launch Ramp area on April 6 and may have additional information should contact the National Park Service, the agency urged.
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