Florida horse trainer arrested after alleged abuse caught on video

When a horse hands you its trust, you owe it better than what a Florida trainer is now accused of doing. In Marion County, a man hired to bring along a Paso Fino gelding instead ended up in handcuffs after a witness recorded him punching and kicking the horse, then shared the footage with authorities. The arrest has rattled Florida’s tight‑knit horse community and raised hard questions about how abuse can hide in plain sight until someone hits “record.”

I have spent enough time around barns to know tempers can flare when a horse misbehaves, but what investigators describe here is not a bad moment, it is a pattern of violence. The case against Benito Orlando Cotto Colon, and the way it unfolded through video and social media, shows how quickly a quiet training arrangement can turn into a criminal investigation once a horse owner and a few bystanders decide they are not going to look the other way.

The trainer at the center of the case

Deputies in Marion County say the man in the video is 34‑year‑old Benito Orlando Cotto Colon, a professional horse trainer who had been working in Florida’s horse country. According to an arrest affidavit, Cotto Colon was taken into custody on an animal cruelty charge after investigators reviewed footage that appeared to show him repeatedly striking a horse in his care, then confirmed his identity and role as the trainer involved in the incident. The affidavit identifies him by his full name and age and ties him directly to the horse that appears in the recording, a detail that anchors the criminal case to a specific individual rather than a vague complaint about an unknown handler, as outlined in one detailed affidavit.

In the broader public conversation, his name has shown up with a few misspellings and variations, which often happens when a local case suddenly goes viral. One short video clip circulating online refers to him as “Benito Gooto Cologne,” and still identifies him as a 34‑year‑old trainer in “Marian County,” a misprint of Marion County that still points back to the same man and the same incident once you line up the age, location, and alleged conduct in the clip.

The horse, the owner, and the trust that was broken

The horse at the center of this case is not some anonymous mount pulled from a rental string. Investigators identify him as an Abe Pasofino gelding named El Secreto the Becelou, a Paso Fino whose breeding and training represent years of investment and care. The horse belongs to owner Mae Maroquin, who had turned to a professional to bring out the best in her horse, not to see him battered in a training pen. In a statement shared with reporters, Maroquin described how she had entrusted El Secreto the Becelou to this trainer and later learned, through video, that the trust had been badly misplaced, a detail that comes through clearly in the account tied to Maroquin.

For anyone who has ever handed a horse over to a trainer, that detail hits hard. You are not only paying for expertise, you are handing over the reins of an animal that cannot speak for itself. The description of El Secreto the Becelou being kicked, punched, and yanked around by the reins while his owner was not present cuts against the basic expectation that a trainer will protect a horse’s welfare as carefully as the owner would. That sense of betrayal is written between the lines of the owner’s statement and the way the horse is described in the training video that later surfaced.

What the video allegedly shows in the arena

According to the arrest affidavit, the case started with a witness who pulled out a phone and recorded what was happening in the training area instead of walking away. The video, later turned over to deputies, shows the horse in clear distress, trying to evade repeated blows while the trainer continues to punch and kick him. Investigators say the footage captures the horse being struck in the head and body while the reins are forcefully pulled, actions that left the animal scrambling to get away and struggling to keep his balance, details that are laid out in the description of the recorded abuse.

For those who have watched the short clips that later hit social media, the reaction is almost physical. The horse flinches and tries to move away, only to be yanked back and struck again, a pattern that is hard to square with any legitimate training method. One widely shared short shows the 34‑year‑old trainer in a round pen or small arena, repeatedly kicking and punching the horse while maintaining a grip on the reins, a sequence that lines up with what deputies describe in the shocking video that helped launch the investigation.

From Facebook confession to handcuffs

What pushed this case from disturbing barnyard rumor to a formal arrest was not only the witness video, but what investigators say happened online afterward. Deputies report that they tracked down a Facebook account belonging to Colon and found a post in which he acknowledged that he was the person in the video and tried to explain his actions. In that post, he claimed the horse had nearly thrown him off before the recording started and admitted that his behavior in response was not appropriate, a sequence that investigators say they pieced together from the Facebook account tied to Colon.

Another report notes that before deputies showed up with cuffs, Cotto Colon had already posted online acknowledging he was the man in the footage and repeating his claim that the horse almost unseated him, as if that context might soften what viewers saw. Investigators say they treated that online admission as part of the evidence trail, combining it with the witness video and statements from the horse’s owner to build the cruelty case, a process that is described in detail in the coverage of his online confession.

How deputies in Marion County built the cruelty case

Once the video and Facebook post were in hand, Marion County deputies moved from monitoring social media chatter to a full‑blown criminal investigation. Detectives interviewed the witness who recorded the incident, the horse’s owner, and others around the barn, then compared their accounts to what appears on screen. They also reviewed additional videos from the same facility that, according to one report, did not show abuse but helped confirm the layout of the arena and the trainer’s regular presence there, a detail that shows up in the description of the other videos deputies reviewed.

Investigators then turned to Florida’s animal cruelty statutes, which make it a crime to intentionally torment or unnecessarily mutilate an animal, and weighed whether the conduct in the video met that bar. The affidavit describes the horse’s attempts to evade the blows and the visible distress as key indicators that the trainer’s actions were not part of any accepted training method. A detective with the sheriff’s office later emphasized that the horse’s obvious fear and the repeated strikes were central to the decision to file charges, a point that is echoed in the account of how the cruelty case was built.

“It is cruelty”: how law enforcement and the public reacted

When the video started circulating, the reaction from Marion County law enforcement was blunt. One official described what the trainer did as cruelty, plain and simple, rejecting any suggestion that it could be chalked up to a training technique or a momentary lapse. That choice of words matters, because it signals that deputies are not treating this as a gray‑area dispute between horse people, but as a criminal act against a sentient animal, a stance that comes through clearly in the statement that “it is cruelty” in the law enforcement response.

Out in the community, the outrage was just as sharp. Horse owners and riders shared the clip with warnings that it was hard to watch, and many called for the trainer to be barred from working with animals again. One widely shared post labeled the case as another “Florida Man” story, noting that a horse trainer in Marion County, Florida, had been arrested after allegedly admitting on Facebook that he abused a horse, a framing that captured both the shock and the anger in the public reaction.

The role of social media in exposing barnyard abuse

As ugly as the footage is, the way it surfaced shows how much the landscape has changed for anyone who thinks they can rough up a horse behind closed gates. A witness with a smartphone can now capture a few seconds of video, send it to the owner, and then to deputies, all in the span of an afternoon. In this case, investigators say the original recording was submitted directly to authorities, then later shared more widely, turning a local cruelty complaint into a viral example of why people need to speak up when they see a horse in trouble, a chain of events that is laid out in the description of the witness video.

Facebook played a second, unexpected role when Colon allegedly used his own account to talk about what happened. Deputies say they found his post, where he acknowledged being the man in the video and tried to justify his actions by saying the horse nearly threw him, and treated it as a kind of written confession. That mix of video evidence and the trainer’s own words gave investigators a stronger case than they might have had with a shaky recording alone, a point that shows up in the description of the Facebook confession that helped lead to his arrest.

Inside the barn: what witnesses and deputies say they saw

Beyond the main video, deputies and reporters have described a scene that will be familiar to anyone who has spent time in a training barn, but with a darker edge. The horse is tacked up and on a line or under saddle, and the trainer is close enough to land kicks and punches while still controlling the reins. Witnesses told investigators that the horse was trying to get away, tossing his head and moving his feet, while the trainer kept after him instead of stepping back and regrouping, a pattern that is reflected in the way the incident is described in the witness account shared with deputies.

Some of the short clips that later hit social feeds show the same sequence from slightly different angles, reinforcing the sense that this was not a single stray kick but a string of deliberate blows. One video, for example, shows the trainer stepping toward the horse and driving a kick into its side, then following up with punches while the horse’s head is pulled around by the reins, a combination that would leave even a seasoned mount rattled. That kind of repeated, targeted contact is what pushed deputies to treat the case as criminal cruelty rather than a training dispute, a distinction that comes through in the deputies’ description of the footage.

What this means for horse owners and trainers going forward

For horse owners, the lesson here is uncomfortable but necessary. It is not enough to drop a horse off at a barn, write a check, and assume everything behind the gate is fine. Owners like Mae Maroquin, who trusted a trainer with El Secreto the Becelou, are now reminders that you need to watch sessions when you can, talk to other clients, and pay attention to how horses look and act when they come out of the arena. The fact that a Florida horse owner had to learn from a video that her trainer was punching and kicking her horse is a warning that shows up starkly in the account of how a Florida horse owner helped bring this case to light.