Puerto Rico welfare group seeks evidence in racehorse euthanasia case

The fight now centers on the paper trail, not just the tragedy. Chrissy Laughlin, who founded a Caribbean racehorse welfare group, has asked Puerto Rico’s horse racing administrative tribunal to reverse a ruling that denied access to evidence tied to the case of Kayseri, the mare euthanized at Camarero Race Track in Canóvanas.

That matters because this is not a routine filing over a dead horse. It is a test of whether the people pressing the case can actually see the records needed to judge how the system handled a horse that was repeatedly flagged before she died. Laughlin wrote that Kayseri was first flagged in July 2024 and that she submitted an official intervention request to the Puerto Rico Racing Commission. In a June 2025 letter, she said the mare had been placed on the vets’ list multiple times for lameness, medication violations and appetite loss before she was euthanized on Jan. 9, 2025.

The case has already spilled beyond a single complaint. Laughlin said Kayseri’s death is the subject of three formal complaints against the Puerto Rico Racing Commission, track veterinarians and the mare’s final owner. That puts the tribunal dispute at the center of a wider question: if an advocacy group cannot get access to evidence in a euthanasia case, how hard is it for anyone outside the racing bureaucracy to evaluate what happened?

Puerto Rico racing has faced these questions before. The Puerto Rico Horse Owners Association sued the Gaming Commission and Camarero’s corporate owners in federal court over track conditions it said were unsafe and had persisted for nearly a decade, seeking $500,000 in horse-injury damages. That suit was later dropped after the owners allowed independent consultant John Passero to inspect the track, a sign that outside scrutiny still has to be forced into the process.

Regulators have acknowledged the problem in policy, at least on paper. In November 2023, the Puerto Rico Gaming Commission adopted new protocols that could allow suspension of racing licenses and fines in neglect cases. Outside pressure has also mounted from the industry itself, with 1/ST Racing announcing it would stop selling Gulfstream Park and Santa Anita Park simulcast signals to Hipódromo Camarero over horse welfare and safety concerns.

The broader record in Puerto Rico racing is one of disputed safety, aftercare gaps and enforcement fights. BloodHorse reported in 2021 that a cargo shipment to Puerto Rico led to nine horse deaths, a scandal that helped spur bans at some tracks on users of cargo-shipped horses. Kayseri’s case now sits inside that same history, and the answer to a simple question, who gets to see the evidence, may say as much about racing’s public trust as the death itself.