What is known is Madonna fell from a horse Saturday while riding in the Hamptons on Long Island. The 50-year-old singer was treated for minor injuries at a hospital and released.
According to publicist Liz Rosenberg, the horse was spooked by “paparazzi who jumped out of the bushes to photograph the singer,” Reuters reports.
But photographer Thomas Hinton told Newsday he had taken photographs from a public road, and that no other photographers were in the vicinity, except for one photog – Madonna’s host for the ride, Steve Klein.
Hinton said he received a tip saying Madonna was arriving at Klein’s estate by helicopter.
The photographer staked out a spot on Scuttle Hole Road near Klein’s farm and aimed his camera through a grove of trees, but bushes hindered a clear shot, so he left.
Hinton later received another tip telling him the singer had fallen from her horse. He returned to the area to see Madonna stretched out on a backboard being hoisted into a Bridgehampton Fire Department ambulance.
“If a photographer startled a horse, I'm thinking we would have seen the pictures by now," Hinton told Newsday. ‘That would be such an egregious thing to do, to trespass and startle a horse. The police would have been looking for a photographer.”
Southampton police didn’t give any details of the accident. Hinton also said Klein and his staff stood between him and the ambulance, but other than blocking the photographer’s line-of-sight, didn’t try to prevent him from taking pictures.
“We were all polite with each other,” Hinton said.
This isn’t the first time Madonna has fallen from a horse. The singer broke her collarbone and cracked three ribs after falling from a horse in England in 2005.
Click here for the Reuters article.
Click here for the Newsday article.