3 horses dead in Bessemer City arena collapse

Three horses were killed late Sunday night when the Sunnyside Farms Arena near Bessemer City collapsed.

Members of the Lovelace family, which owns Sunnyside Farms off Tryon Courthouse Road, heard a loud noise just after 10:30 p.m. Sunday, but it wasn’t until dawn Monday that the source of the noise became clear. The red roof of the massive arena had caved in, toppling to the ground. Horses Babydoll, Honey and Peyton lay dead. Only their friend Shotgun escaped.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Sue Lovelace said while she and family workers surveyed the damage in the snow-covered pasture Monday afternoon. “We looked out the window and saw it… They had been coming in to get out of the weather. This was the only dry dirt around that they could go on.”

Lovelace said the horses were essentially members of the family themselves.

The arena off Tryon Courthouse Road was available for people to rent for equestrian events and was well-visited by the community since it was built in the early 2000s. Lovelace said an insurance representative came out Monday morning to start the investigative process. County property records show the arena was built in 2006 and was about 24,000 square feet.

“Everything here, when we built it, was engineered, of course, to company specifications, and then as this became a public venue, Gaston County was here and re-inspected everything for the safety of the public,” Lovelace said. “We just have no idea. Everybody is speculating it was the weight of the snow.”

The northern parts of Gaston County received more snow than the southern portions of the county, and a few inches of melting snow from Winter Storm Diego could still be seen on the ground off Tryon Courthouse on Monday afternoon.

The three horses were all female. Peyton was just 5 years old. Babydoll was 15. Honey was 28, and she’d been a part of the family for a decade.

“She was quite a character,” Lovelace said. “She was a cutting horse. She was a roping horse. She was a cowboy-mounted shooting horse. After she couldn't run so fast or stop a cow at the end of the rope, she became the horse … that everybody went to pet to learn to love horses. She mellowed from being a frisky ‘sit deep in the saddle’-type horse to, ‘We’ll ride for a little bit, but then put me back in the pasture because I am retired.’”

The gates of the arena were open so the horses could come and go.

“This was their retirement area — all except for the young horse,” Lovelace said. “She was the only one working.”

Honey and Shotgun were always together.

“Her best buddy survived her,” Lovelace said. “It’s going to be the roughest time for him because he’s still searching for her.”

The farm raises beef cows and has some show horses, but many people from the area would stop by to hang out with the “retired” horses.

“Everybody in the community has come here for some type of event, from a dog show to a horse show to a junior rodeo,” Lovelace said. “We’ve had weddings here. We’ve had a lot of support from the community and a lot of good friends here.”

As to the fate of the arena, Lovelace said the family hopes to rebuild. Nothing, though, can replace the horses.

“First, we bury our horses,” Lovelace said. “We have a family pet cemetery. We’ll make markers for them. We always have a small funeral service for our pets.”

You can reach Dashiell Coleman at 704-869-1819 or on Twitter @DashiellColeman