Be careful around those deer in your yard!......
Couple severely injured in deer attack
Thursday, November 16, 2006
By Lillian Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When state police responded to a call about an aggressive deer at a rural Clinton County home yesterday morning, they figured the creature would be long gone. Instead, they found a six-point whitetail buck straddling a screaming woman in her back yard, repeatedly goring her face, neck and chest. A man lay near by, with multiple wounds, in and out of consciousness.
Cpl. Todd A. Brian and Trooper Stephen E. Wilcox of the Lamar barracks in the north central Pennsylvania county responded to a 911 call at 7:40 a.m. The caller was a woman who said a buck had blocked her door so that she could not leave the house to feed her cats, then attacked her housemate who went to shoo the deer away.
"She was inside at the time. We responded, assuming by the time we got there the deer would be gone," said Cpl. Brian. When they arrived, five or six minutes after the 911 call, "we pull up, and immediately hear her screaming. There's a lot of equipment, farm machinery, rubble all around this house, and we weren't sure where she was at. We split up -- we were trying to find her, assuming she was screaming because of injuries to him. "But I get to the back yard and find her pinned to the ground by a large buck. He had his front feet straddling her, one on each side of her torso." The buck was goring the woman in the chest, neck and face, he said.
"Obviously I had to do something to stop it. But even from 8 or 10 feet I didn't want to shoot the deer -- his upper body was right down by her chest. And I wasn't sure exactly where Trooper Wilcox was. So I picked up the left horn, I pulled it toward me on the left side and that got the buck up high enough off her that I could get a shot. I immediately started shooting it in the chest. It took off and ran almost directly into Trooper Wilcox," who had come around from a different side of the house. "He shot it several more times and put it down."
The victims, Linda Yost and Frank Rishel, have lived together on the rural property for many years, Cpl. Brian said. He said he believed Mr. Rishel is in his 60s and Ms. Yost in her 50s.
The victims were badly injured -- "you have six big bony points like that, that keep driving into someone's face," said Cpl. Brian. "Both had multiple puncture wounds, gore wounds and severe facial injuries." Ms. Yost's eyes were badly injured.
The troopers wanted to transport Mr. Rishel and Ms. Yost by medical helicopter, but fog made that impossible. They were taken to Lock Haven Hospital. A hospital spokeswoman said she was not at liberty to release any information.
Pennsylvania Game Commission officials were investigating the apparently unprovoked attack. A commission worker took the carcass away. Although the buck appeared healthy, if will be checked for rabies and other diseases. Cpl. Brian said game officers told him they find two or three rabid deer every year. "I've never seen anything like it. Nor had the local game officer," said Cpl. Brian. "It's not something you train for."
Commission employee Kenneth Packard noted that deer are in the midst of the rut, which is the fall mating season, and for whatever reason, the buck chose to spar with these people. "That is not behavior normally associated with wild deer, as they almost invariably keep their distance from people," a commission news release said.
"There is no doubt in my mind that the immediate response and action of Cpl. Brian and Trooper Wilcox saved the lives of the two victims," said Warren "Quig" Stump, Northcentral Region Law Enforcement supervisor for the state game commission.
