11/01/2025
Boston Police Officer Frank Pomodoro comforting his partner and police horse, October 1989
🐴 An Officer and His Horse: The Day Fritz Fell and a City Came Together
Over 35 years ago, Boston Police Officer Frank Pomodoro found himself living every mounted officer’s worst nightmare — his trusted partner and police horse, Fritz, had fallen into a construction hole.
It was an ordinary day outside the old District D-4 station, then located near Berkeley Street and Warren Avenue. The hole, covered by a steel plate, gave way beneath Fritz, sending the 1,500-pound horse crashing down.
Frank was inside the station when someone ran in, breathless, shouting that his horse had fallen. His heart dropped. He feared the worst — a broken leg would mean losing his partner of three years.
But fate had other plans.
“He was back to work in three weeks and, luckily, he only suffered a cut to one of his front legs,” Pomodoro says with a smile, still grateful decades later.
The photo of that moment — Frank kneeling beside Fritz, comforting him as firefighters and bystanders rushed to help — was taken on October 31, 1989.
“I remember it was Halloween,” recalls Frank. “I had to call my wife and tell her I wasn’t going to make it home in time to give out candy.”
What stays with him most after all these years isn’t the fear or the chaos, but the compassion he witnessed that day.
“Perfect strangers — even one guy I had locked up — came running over to help Fritz,” he says. “When the Fire Department arrived, they tied a rope around Fritz to keep him from slipping deeper. The rope stretched across the street, and there must’ve been 15 or 20 people holding onto it to keep him steady. The compassion of perfect strangers was unbelievable.”
But ropes weren’t enough. To lift a horse that size safely out of the hole, they needed something stronger.
By sheer luck, Shaughnessy & Ahearn, a local rigging company, had a crane job just around the corner. When they heard what had happened, they rushed over — and soon Fritz was lifted to safety.
“My mother was so grateful,” Frank says, “she sent a fruit basket to Mr. Shaughnessy, the owner, thanking him for what they did for Fritz.”
Today, Frank serves as a detective in the Domestic Violence Unit, nearing the end of a nearly 30-year career. He’s seen the best and the worst of people — but nothing, he says, compares to what he witnessed that Halloween day.
“I met a lot of really great people that day, and to this day, I have nothing but gratitude to those who came over to help Fritzie. I’ll never forget them.”
❤️🐎
That photo — an officer comforting his horse in a moment of vulnerability — has become more than just an image. It’s a reminder of the bond between humans and animals, and of the compassion that can unite a community when it matters most.
