Attendees in the grandstands of the Humboldt County Fairgrounds were horrified Saturday afternoon after witnessing two bucking broncos suffer broken legs during the “Outlaw Rodeo College Invitational,” according to witnesses interviewed by the Outpost.

“It was absolutely horrible,” Eureka resident Krista Catlett said when reached by phone Sunday morning. “I’ve been to so many rodeos, went to the PBR [Professional Bull Riders] finals in Las Vegas three or four times, and I’ve never witnessed anything like this before. I don’t understand.”

The injuries occurred during the bucking bronc event, in which riders try to remain in the saddle for eight seconds while the horses rear, spin and buck in an effort to dislodge them.

“A couple of horses ran, and then this big red one — a beautiful red horse — came out,” Catlett recalled. “It was just bucking, trying to get rider off its back and the cinch out of its flank. It came down on a back foot and just snapped his ankle. And it was horrible because the show continued, but the people around us knew what had happened.”

She said a man brought a horse trailer onto the field and somehow managed to coax the injured animal inside. But rather than getting driven off, the trailer remained onsite for a while.

“It was weird,” Catlett said. “The trailer was just sitting there. It was black and it had ‘Wrangler’ written on the side. I don’t know. Maybe they had medication [inside] and they’d already put it down.”

When the second horse broke its leg, Catlett was hiding her eyes behind her hands, she said. To her, all of the horses in the event seemed unusually agitated from the get-go. 

“They were, like, angry,” she said. “Wild. Even while they were back in the holding area, they were rearing up, bucking, kicking — almost trying to get out of this holding pen. … Maybe they had [the horses] cinched too tight, but ‘wild’ isn’t even a good word. They just kept sitting, rearing, pawing. …Every horse that came out of that chute took off full force and just bucked or rolled, ended up on ground or hit the rail. … I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

When she removed her hands from in front of her face, she looked up and saw another horse with a broken leg. 

“It was still trying to buck, and the announcer was saying, ‘Everything’s going to be OK,’ but the stands were emptying,” Catlett said. “People were just leaving. … Girls were just crying everywhere. One girl, over by Cook’s Barbecue, was just sobbing. It was horrendous. Just awful.”

People commenting on Facebook agreed that things looked dangerous even before the injuries happened.

“The way they were kicking rolling and moving just was not right,” one woman wrote. “They were slamming into fences. Falling multiple times. … I would’ve stopped the event within the first few riders. And they didn’t. Devastating. An accident is a one off. Negligence is watching a nightmare unfold and not stopping it.”

The Outpost interviewed another witness to the event, who asked to remain anonymous. We’ll use the name Jason. He sent the following video, which does not include footage of the horses being injured but comes from earlier in the event.

Jason only witnessed the latter horse being injured. He called it a “freak accident” and described the company that organized the event, Marysville-based Flying U Rodeo, as one of the oldest and most professional in the business.

“And believe me when I say they take the utmost care of their animals,” Jason said.

The rider was still in the saddle when the second horse broke its leg, according to Jason, and again, trainers rushed in and managed to load the wounded animal into the back of a trailer. Jason said that what bothered him the most was that the public address announcer told everyone in the stands that the horse would soon be “doctored up and back on the road.”

“You can’t fix a horse’s leg,” he said. “How ignorant for the announcer to just say that. They just lost two horses that they’ll never get back. It’ll be shot, put down and buried.”

Jason said he doesn’t want this double-tragedy “to become some animal-rights thing” and start bad-mouthing the rodeo company. But he also said that he thinks maybe the horses being used in the even were too young.

“The probably needed another year before they got out in arena,” he said. “Two other horses could have easily broke their leg the way they were bucking. It was almost as if they didn’t know how to buck.”

The Outpost left a voicemail for Flying U Rodeo and sent an email to the rodeo coaches at College of the Redwoods, which participated in the event. We expect to have more information Monday.

One more video from Jason: