A Pennsylvania horse trainer was charged July 28 with trying to rig races at Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course by injecting horses with performance-enhancing drugs.
Pennsylvania State Police charged Darryl Delahoussaye, 47, of Harrisburg, Pa., with rigging a publicly exhibited contest, administering drugs to racehorses, tampering with evidence, and theft. A Dauphin County grand jury investigation concluded that Delahoussaye gave horses banned substances, including snake venom and an anti-inflammatory drug, before they raced at Penn National.
Delahoussaye 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 at Suffolk Downs in Massachusetts, according to the grand jury report.
The trainer was banned from Penn National earlier this year.
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.
Michael Gill, a horse owner Delahoussaye had been working for, was barred from Penn National in February after a series of horse breakdowns and a boycott by jockeys fearful for their safety. Gill at the time said he did nothing wrong.
Gill, who won 370 races last year with horses that earned $6.7 million, is out of the horse racing business. Gill said July 28 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.
The grand jury probe began earlier this year. It wasn’t immediately known if the investigation is over or whether other individuals will be charged.
