‘I couldn’t believe she’d done it’: owner’s shock after fellow livery pleads guilty to trying to give her horse rat poison

The owner of a horse to whom another livery attempted to give rat poison has spoken out in fear the same thing might happen to someone else.

Christine Campey, of Caldwells Gate Lane, pleaded guilty to attempting to give the rat poison to a seven-year-old mare called Elle, belonging to Gill Poole, in May 2023. She was given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay costs of £500 and  £430 compensation.

“It’s been quite difficult to get my head round because there’s no reason for it,” Gill told H&H. “Not that it would make it OK but if there had been a vendetta, that’s at least an explanation.

“To know that somebody will do that to you for no reason, it’s not a nice feeling, because if you can’t think of a reason, you can’t change it. It makes you doubt your trust in other people as well.”

Gill had had her part-bred Lusitano Elle on the DIY yard for about three weeks, during which time she had been helping Campey muck out her horse, as Campey had a sore foot.

“The yard owner phoned me one day and said [Campey] had said something suspicious, which made her check the CCTV,” she said. “When she’d watched it, she contacted me and said, ‘I think she’s poisoned your horse; she’s fed her rat poison.’ I said, ‘Don’t be silly.’”

Gill said she was sure there had to be some misunderstanding. She had been to the yard that morning, fed all the horses, left them in, and made up Elle’s feed for the evening. She added that the yard owner had been having a clear-out, and that there was rat poison, in sealed sachets, in a box.

“When she checked the CCTV, it showed this lady taking the poison out, putting it in a pocket, throwing the rest on the floor, then going into the feed room and coming back out with my horse’s feed bucket,” Gill said. “It shows her wetting it, pretending to put it over her own horse’s stable door, coming out and then putting it over mine, feeding it to my horse. When the yard owner ran out to check, she found grains of pink rat poison on the floor by the bucket, and the horse had eaten it.”

Evening feed

Gill said the yard owner checked the evening feeds, and found more poison hidden under the food in Elle’s bucket.

“The vet told me what to look out for, and she didn’t get sick,” she said. “She would have had to have a lot more to kill her or cause harm, but my worry is, how long had it been going on, and how long might it have gone on? I could have lost my horse if the yard owner hadn’t been so quick-thinking.”

Gill, who said she could not initially believe Campey had done what she had, then reported the incident to the police and Campey was prosecuted. She initially pleaded not guilty but changed her plea.

“She’s never said sorry or acknowledged she’s done it, or anything,” Gill said, adding that she had panic attacks after the incident.

“I’d only moved to the DIY yard as Elle had been off for a year because of an injury – a tiny splinter that ended up meaning she almost lost her leg – and then this happened. It’s made me reevaluate what my horse means to me; she’s happy and comfortable and alive. I’ve got her at home now, so I can see her out of the window and know she’s safe.”

Gill added that there were no warning signs in any of Campey’s behaviour – “If I hadn’t seen the CCTV, I wouldn’t have believed it,” she said.

“She’s now helping at another stables and I felt I had to share what happened as she could do it again.”

Barrister’s advice

Campey told H&H she pleaded guilty on her barrister’s advice as she “didn’t have the mental strength or capacity to go in the witness box and be questioned”.

She cited mental health issues and the death of her husband 14 years ago, and said she suffers from chronic pain.

“I was taking a lot of tramadol and anti-psychotic drugs and on that day or night, I can’t remember how many tablets I’d taken,” she said, adding that she had a doctor’s note to say the amount she had taken could cause lapses in memory.

She said she “can’t remember clearly” what happened, but does remember taking one sachet of rat poison herself, because she wanted to end her life. She said she followed her normal routine, giving the horses “a bit of extra mash to get them to finish their feed so that I could then put them out on the field”, but rushing to take a sick dog to the vet. She said she rang the yard owner to ask her to pick up the rat poison to stop children accessing it, and that this is what made the yard owner check the CCTV.

“I didn’t do it, I know I didn’t do it,” she said. “There was a vet on the yard; I was looking after her horse before all this, who gave me a character reference, and said, ‘I know you wouldn’t harm an animal.’ My life has been animals, horses, dogs, and my career of nursing, looking after people. My life has been hell for the past two years.”

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