A Nevada veterinarian died by suicide amid massive backlash to a video showing him beating a horse.
The body of Shawn Frehner, 56, was recovered from Lake Mead on April 18 – nearly two weeks after he vanished.
The Office of the Clark County Coroner and Medical Examiner has since ruled that Frehner died of drowning – with the use of pentobarbital as a contributing factor, KTNV reports.
The drug, which Frehner injected himself with, is used for euthanizing animals, according to News 3 LV.
Frehner had been facing felony animal abuse charges when he disappeared on April 6, after he was filmed abusing a horse he had been called out to help.
It was shared by the horse’s owner, Shawna Gonzalez, and showed Frehner kicking her horse Big Red in the jaw.
On Facebook, Gonzalez wrote that her daughter began recording the veterinarian after being concerned by how tightly he appeared to have wound a rope around the colt’s neck.
‘I heard [my mother] yell, “Oh my God. He just kicked him,”‘ Gonzalez recounted.

Shawn Frehner, 56, died of suicide, the Office of the Clark County Coroner and Medical Examiner has determined

Frehner had been facing felony animal abuse charges when he disappeared on April 6, after he was filmed abusing a horse he had been called out to help
‘He wrapped the horse around his neck three times, and he kicked him in the head.
‘I had started having a severe anxiety attack and couldn’t breathe myself.
‘I was already on the ground, and my daughter picked up the phone and hit record, and that’s when she got him on videotape, kicking him.’
The animal was left with abrasions to the skull and taken to Desert Pines Equine Center.
Gonzalez also claimed that the vet bills for Red are likely to run into the thousands and requested donations to Desert Pine Rescue Center.
‘The abuse and cruelty my horse suffered on 4/3/2025 was inhumane, disgusting, appalling, and the most hurtful thing and from the hands of vet that I trusted and Red trusted,’ she wrote shortly after the incident.
As the clip went viral, some social media users sent the veterinarian death threats – while others flooded his business page with negative reviews.
Eventually, Frehner took to his own social media page to apologize – claiming that the video did not show the full story.

Frehner apologized but admitted that he kicked the horse in the chin
‘I did not blatantly haul off and kick this horse as it appears in the video. That was not my intention at all,’ Frehner wrote, 8News Now reports.
‘It was done simply to get the horse in a better position so that he could breathe and get up and move so I could again try to anesthetize.’
‘But yes I did kick him right in the chin and I very much do apologize and wish this never happened,’ he wrote.
Shortly after writing the apology, though, Frehner seemed to have deleted the post as he disappeared.

Investigators located his body in Lake Mead about two weeks after he disappeared, after finding his unoccupied truck and belongings were found along the reservoir shore
Investigators soon honed in on Lake Mead, after discovering his wallet, keys and cellphone in an unoccupied truck near the edge of the enormous reservoir.
At the time, Frehner’s father said he did not know why his son would have gone to Lake Mead – noting that he did not own a boat.
He then told investigators he was concerned for his son’s safety amid the online vitriol.
Meanwhile, Gonzalez said she, too, was distraught by the news of his disappearance.
‘It’s horrible, I never, ever wished this upon him, I never wished this upon anybody’ she said. ‘This is not what I wanted in the end at all.’