Drunk Eagles Fan Really Punched a Police Horse During Playoff Game

Punching a police horse proves to be a horrible idea yet again.

The Eagles beat the Falcons in a playoff game on Saturday night, and when they did, they advanced to the NFC Championship Game, which will be played next Sunday night at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. As the game ended, many Eagles fans gathered around their team’s stadium and talked about how they would be back next week to—hopefully—see their team clinch a berth in the Super Bowl.

But one fan who definitely won’t be in attendance at the game is Taylor Hendricks, a 22-year-old fan from Whitehall, Pennsylvania who managed to get himself into serious trouble on Saturday night by doing one of the dumbest things possible. It started with Hendricks getting ejected from the game for being too intoxicated and for not having a ticket to get into the game in the first place, and it ended with him punching a police horse as well as a police officer who was on the horse at the time.

Hendricks was ejected from Lincoln Financial Field at some point during the game when he tried to access to the stadium. As he exited the premises, he walked up to a police horse in the area and "began punching the horse in the face, neck, and shoulder area." He then continued to strike the horse even as police officers told him not to, and eventually, he ended up punching an officer who was riding the horse in the legs. He was taken into police custody a short time later.

Fortunately, the horse and the officer were both able to escape the incident unharmed. But Hendricks is going to have to deal with a legal headache in the weeks to come. He was charged with aggravated assault, taunting a police animal, simple assault, and defiant trespassing after he was arrested, and he is now scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 30—less than a week before Super Bowl LII—to answer to the charges.

Hendricks is, somewhat surprisingly, not the first person to face these kinds of charges in recent years. Back in 2013, a Newcastle soccer fan was arrested after punching a horse, and in 2016, a flash mob in Philadelphia ended with a 16-year-old punching a police horse. WTF, guys?

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