GRANTVILLE, Pa. (AP) -- A Pennsylvania horse trainer was charged
Wednesday with trying to rig races at Penn National Race Course
by injecting horses with performance-enhancing drugs.
State police charged Darryl Delahoussaye, 47, of Harrisburg,
with rigging a publicly exhibited contest, administering drugs
to race horses, tampering with evidence and theft. Court records
also spell his first name Darrel.
A Dauphin County grand jury investigation concluded that
Delahoussaye gave horses banned items - including snake venom
and an anti-inflammatory substance - before they raced at the
track outside Harrisburg.
He also was charged with reselling three injured horses after
promising they would be retired to a petting zoo, but at least
one of those horses subsequently raced three times in
Massachusetts, according to the grand jury report issued Friday.
State police said Delahoussaye had two employees remove evidence
from a barn at Penn National in an attempt to foil
investigators.
Delahoussaye was released on $20,000 bond. A district court
official said he did not have a lawyer on file, and a listed
phone number for him could not be located.
A horse-owner Delahoussaye had been working for, Michael Gill of
Derry, N.H., was barred from Penn National in February after a
series of horse breakdowns and a boycott by jockeys fearful for
their safety.
Gill, who won 370 races last year and earned $6.7 million, is
out of the horse racing business. Gill said Wednesday that, if
the accusations against Delahoussaye are true, none of it was
done at his request. Gill, who has not been charged, said he is
not under investigation and has done nothing illegal.