A Man Rode A Horse Through Northeast D.C. During Rush Hour. He Says He Did It For The Kids

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Wed Mar 11, 2020, 12:01 PM - Edit history (1)

MAR 10, 2:37 PM

A Man Rode A Horse Through Northeast D.C. During Rush Hour. He Says He Did It For The Kids

Andrew Giambrone



RaShaod Crosson and his noble steed, Ellie, stop for a photo with D.C. children and police Monday.

RaShaod Crosson

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s…a man galloping on a horse in the middle of the nation’s capital?!

On Monday afternoon, RaShaod Crosson, 29, rode his quarter horse Ellie from Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium to North Capitol Street, traversing Benning Road NE and H, K, and M streets NE.

Crosson and Ellie turned heads along the way, leaving some D.C. residents and workers wondering what the heck was going on.

DC WHAT is happening

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@PoPville
Who else saw the man riding a horse up M St. NE?!? #dchorsewatch2020

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Was this a sign of the apocalypse? A harbinger of the End, on a day when the stock market plummeted because of the spread of coronavirus, including in the District?

Nay. It was just an animal caretaker from Maryland who says he wanted to take advantage of the nice weather and expose D.C. children to the magic of horses. “As horse riders, we always watch the weather, so when it’s a good day, we try to go out and ride,” Crosson tells DCist in a phone interview Tuesday. “I said ‘hey, I’m always riding in Maryland. I’m going to go out to the community where I was born.'”

“There are a lot of children who have never seen a horse in person,” he continues. “And I put a lot of smiles on children’s faces. Even down to the MPD officers: I met sergeants and lieutenants, [with] their body cams. They stopped to take pictures.”

A former D.C. Public Schools student and a veteran, Crosson says he grew up in Southwest and moved around the region. Now, he’s one of the owners of a horseback-riding farm in Brandywine, Md., located about 16 miles from the city.

The farm has a new petting zoo where people can visit Ellie as well as her equine friends: among them, Ghost, Roxy, and 2Sweet, who is a pony.

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Ellie greets D.C. police officers near Gallaudet University in Northeast.

RaShaod Crosson

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It wasn’t their first rodeo in the area. On Sunday, they visited National Harbor, where a crowd of people came up to see Ellie on the waterfront. In January, Crosson was also in the news for having rescued a group of alpacas that got loose in Clinton, Md., and—four days later—made their way back home to him. (The NBC4 journalist who reported that story first identified Crosson as the mysterious D.C. horse rider after a brief video of him and Ellie started circulating on Twitter.) (1)

So, will they ride in D.C. again? “We were hoping to come out today, but the weather isn’t standing up for it,” replies Crosson. “We’re gonna touch every major part of D.C. that we know there’s low-income families who can’t afford to take their kid out to the farm or can’t take themselves.”

As the sun set Monday, Crosson and Ellie headed back to the RFK grounds, wrapping up their visit at about 6 p.m. They left happiness and incredulity in their wake.

This story has been updated with information from D.C. police about the laws surrounding horseback riding in D.C.

(1)

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[procon]

1. Galloping a horse on payment is asking for a disaster.

It would have been a tragedy if that horse had slipped and fell on that asphalt road her rider was galloping on. The horse and rider could have been badly injured, not the best picture to leave those kids that he wanted to see a horse.