(PatriotWise.com) — An Amish family was robbed of their horse and carriage while shopping at a Sturgis, Michigan, Walmart on January 20, ABC News reported.
According to a statement from the Sturgis Department of Public Safety, police were called to the Centerville Road Walmart at about 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 20, after receiving a report about a horse and buggy stolen from the parking lot.
A truck driver who was parked in the Walmart lot witnessed a woman stealing the horse and carriage. The truck driver was able to provide a description of the suspect to the responding officers.
The description matched that of a 31-year-old woman that police had already encountered earlier that day in the same Walmart.
In its statement, the Sturgis Department of Public Safety did not say under what circumstances police had previously spoken to the woman.
Officers eventually caught up with the abandoned horse and buggy later that evening and tracked down the unnamed suspect at a motel nearby, where she was arrested without incident, according to the statement.
The woman was charged with larceny of livestock and larceny and taken to the St. Joseph County Jail pending arraignment.
The horse and buggy were returned to the Amish family. According to the Sturgis Department of Public Safety, the horse was not harmed during the incident.
Sturgis, Michigan, is near the border with Indiana, less than 20 miles from the Shipshewana, Indiana, Amish community in LaGrange County. It is not uncommon for the Amish to travel to Sturgis to go shopping at Walmart.
Shipshewana is known as Amish Country, Indiana. It is home to the third-largest Amish community in the country.
Hate crimes against the Amish are known as “claping”, pronounced “clay-ping.” A common form of “claping” is attacking or terrorizing the Amish when they are on the road in their horse-drawn buggies.
Last year, four teenagers in Ohio were questioned by the sheriff’s deputies after throwing eggs at Amish while riding their buggies in Middlefield. One of the men was injured when the teens, driving by in a pickup truck, hurled eggs at the buggy, striking him in the eye and temporarily blinding him.
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