Kent woman faces Enumclaw horse theft charges

Published 3:35 pm Thursday, June 18, 2026

A Kent woman has been charged with burglary and animal theft after a horse was stolen last spring.

According to court documents, Jenee Amber Westberg allegedly took Reuben the horse from an Enumclaw farm on April 9.

Westberg was arrested on June 2, and charged with second-degree burglary and second-degree theft of livestock on June 12. Prosecutors requested a $30,000 bail, but she was released on her own recognizance.

Reuben was found less than a day after being taken at a “s***hole of a place,” the horse’s owner, Jack Hodge, said in an earlier interview.

The night of the theft, Westberg and another individual reportedly drove to the farm with a truck and a silver horse trailer around 1:30 a.m. and lured the 15-year-old Sorrel Gelding out.

Security footage showed the vehicle leaving the area, but did not get the faces of the suspects.

Given that the suspects appeared to know their way around the farm, the Hodge family suspected Westberg, a former employee of the farm, of the theft. They told detectives she was “very obsessed” with Reuben, asking about him when she would come to buy hay. The family stopped selling her hay last March and didn’t let her see Reuben anymore.

A detective went to Westberg’s house on April 10 and spotted what appeared to be a makeshift barn. After asking to see what was in the barn, Westberg allowed the detective to look inside the structure from the outside.

Detectives spotted a silver horse trailer inside that appeared to be the same seen leaving the Hodge’s farm; Westberg denied there was a trailer in the barn, despite the fact it was in plain view.

Westberg eventually left the property but detectives stayed to watch the barn.

There were people “milling around” the property, but eventually one person began to walk toward a truck and the barn; fearing that evidence was about to be removed or tampered with, deputies were called and surrounded the barn until a search warrant was granted.

Once detectives were able to enter the barn, they spotted Reuben and took him back to the Hodge’s family.

It took detectives two more months of investigation to find evidence allegedly proving that Westberg was one of the people who took Reuben, using additional video footage, Flock Safety automatic license plate readers, and cellphone data.

Her past criminal convictions include possession of drug paraphernalia in 2016, domestic violence and violation of a no-contact order in 2001, and domestic violence assault in 1997.

The theft followed the death of Stephanie (Hodge) Burns who died last November from breast cancer.

Reuben was one of Stephanie’s favorites, and was one of the last of her horses still owned by the Hodge family after many were sold to pay for her cancer treatment.