SCANDIA — A farmer in eastern Minnesota is under arrest after the corpses of two horses were pulled from a half-dug grave in a cornfield.

Gloria Fritz said the Scandia farmer called her Sunday to say her two prize American Saddlebred mares had been shot on Saturday and that he had buried them.

Fritz said she called the sheriff’s office “because it didn’t sound right.”

When Fritz arrived at the farm, she said the farmer pointed to a stand of trees in the horse paddock and told her that’s where the horses had been shot by deer hunters.

But Fritz said, “nobody would shoot an animal that close to a house.”