RaShaod Crosson and his noble steed, Ellie, stop for a photo with D.C. children and police Monday.

RaShaod Crosson

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s…a man galloping on a horse in the middle of the nation’s capital?!

On Monday afternoon, RaShaod Crosson, 29, rode his quarter horse Ellie from Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium to North Capitol Street, traversing Benning Road NE and H, K, and M streets NE.

Crosson and Ellie turned heads along the way, leaving some D.C. residents and workers wondering what the heck was going on.

Was this a sign of the apocalypse? A harbinger of the End, on a day when the stock market plummeted because of the spread of coronavirus, including in the District?

Nay. It was just an animal caretaker from Maryland who says he wanted to take advantage of the nice weather and expose D.C. children to the magic of horses. “As horse riders, we always watch the weather, so when it’s a good day, we try to go out and ride,” Crosson tells DCist in a phone interview Tuesday. “I said ‘hey, I’m always riding in Maryland. I’m going to go out to the community where I was born.'”

“There are a lot of children who have never seen a horse in person,” he continues. “And I put a lot of smiles on children’s faces. Even down to the MPD officers: I met sergeants and lieutenants, [with] their body cams. They stopped to take pictures.”

A former D.C. Public Schools student and a veteran, Crosson says he grew up in Southwest and moved around the region. Now, he’s one of the owners of a horseback-riding farm in Brandywine, Md., located about 16 miles from the city.

The farm has a new petting zoo where people can visit Ellie as well as her equine friends: among them, Ghost, Roxy, and 2Sweet, who is a pony.

Crosson also owns a boat and jet ski rental business in the city, and he says he plans to offer a joint package for both the maritime vehicles and the petting zoo. But yesterday’s ride “had nothing to do with the business,” he says.

On Monday, Crosson drove himself and Ellie from the farm in Brandywine to the RFK Stadium grounds, where they arrived at about 1:30 p.m. (Ellie rode to D.C. in a trailer.) Then, they proceeded west to commercial avenues, residential side streets, and even a few schools, including the Friendship Blow Pierce charter school in Kingman Park. He let passersby pet and mount Ellie, a 15-year-old rescue he adopted in December.

“She has some background in competitions, she jumps,” Crosson says of Ellie, pointing out that she is relatively young for a horse. “She does well with kids. We’ll be using her at our pony parties.” Monday was her first time riding in the District.

Ellie greets D.C. police officers near Gallaudet University in Northeast. RaShaod Crosson

Later that afternoon, someone alerted the Metropolitan Police Department to “a subject riding a horse on the street,” a spokesperson for the police tells DCist in an email. Although officers responded to 1st and M streets NE, in NoMa, an incident report wasn’t written up. The spokesperson notes that it’s legal to ride a horse in the District, but a rider “must follow all traffic regulations” and have up-to-date “exotic animal” permits from the D.C. Health Department.

“It was a more of a ‘wow’ moment more than anything,” Crosson says. He adds that despite being rush hour, traffic wasn’t too bad. Crosson tried to stay on the sidewalk with Ellie, though they rode in a bike lane for a short while, too.

It wasn’t their first rodeo in the area. On Sunday, they visited National Harbor, where a crowd of people came up to see Ellie on the waterfront. In January, Crosson was also in the news for having rescued a group of alpacas that got loose in Clinton, Md., and—four days later—made their way back home to him. (The NBC4 journalist who reported that story first identified Crosson as the mysterious D.C. horse rider after a brief video of him and Ellie started circulating on Twitter.)

So, will they ride in D.C. again? “We were hoping to come out today, but the weather isn’t standing up for it,” replies Crosson. “We’re gonna touch every major part of D.C. that we know there’s low-income families who can’t afford to take their kid out to the farm or can’t take themselves.”

As the sun set Monday, Crosson and Ellie headed back to the RFK grounds, wrapping up their visit at about 6 p.m. They left happiness and incredulity in their wake.

This story has been updated with information from D.C. police about the laws surrounding horseback riding in D.C.

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