White steeds may usually be associated with chivalrous knights and daring deeds, but in a Siberian village, an ivory stallion became the getaway vehicle of choice for a somewhat less noble mission when a man who owed thousands of dollars in child support payments attempted to gallop away from bailiffs on one.
The man, who owed more than 400,000 rubles ($7,600) in child support, was at his home in the village of Malaya Inya in the Krasnoyarsk region when he heard bailiffs knocking on his door, the regional branch of the Federal Bailiffs Service said in an online statement.
The slipper-clad debtor fled the building on horseback, the statement said, without specifying who owned the animal.
The would-be Zorro's dash for freedom was however thwarted when the bailiffs' security team, who were waiting by another exit, managed to corner him.
The man, who had avoided the bailiffs for years, was taken to a nearby court where he was formally served with an order to pay up the child maintenance arrears under threat of criminal charges.
Last December, a woman in the southern city of Kursk tried to escape state bailiffs by climbing out of a window — only to become stuck halfway through, the Lenta.ru news site reported Friday.
The woman, who owed about 500,000 rubles ($9,500) in alimony payments, was eventually helped out of her sticky predicament by her pursuers, the report added.