Cops: Pa. man shot Amish buggy horse

Police on Wednesday identified a Pennsylvania man accused of shooting and killing a horse as it towed a buggy with an Amish couple and their three children inside.

Timothy Antonio Diggs Jr., 22, of Ronks, is charged with five counts of reckless endangerment and one count each of propelling missiles into an occupied vehicle or roadway and animal cruelty.

Police said an Amish man was Nov. 24 driving a buggy carrying his wife and children, aged 7, 9 and 12, to the family's farm. As a northbound car around 9 p.m. passed the vehicle, the buggy driver said he heard "a firecracker-type noise," according to a release from the East Lampeter Township Police Department.

The boom spooked the horse and it bolted. The man, unaware a shot had been fired, was able to get the animal under control. But when the family reached their destination, police said, the horse was bleeding from its mouth. The animal died before a veterinarian could arrive.

A necropsy conducted at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine's New Bolton Center revealed the horse died of a gunshot wound to its left chest, according to investigators.

Diggs was charged Wednesday. He was, at the time, already jailed in the Lancaster County Prison after a search of his home in early December allegedly turned up firearms and a motorcycle that were stolen during two separate burglaries.