Talk about a horrific scene all around.
According to Observer, a young male deer mauled a man while he was gardening in his yard in Palm Coast, Florida back on October 5th.
Due to malicious nature of the deer, and it having zero fear of humans, law enforcement and Florida Fish and Wildlife officials had to catch and put the deer down.
However, the manner in which the deer was killed is highly controversial, and I’d argue, inhumane.
A law enforcement officer’s body camera footage shows police officers roping the deer to a telephone pole in the front yard of the home that’s inside a neighborhood, for a number of people to see.
And rather than shooting the deer for a quick and efficient death, one of the officers slit the deer’s throat with a knife. The deer struggled and bled out on the lawn for a whole 15 minutes, before witnesses said another officer came and shot the creature in its upper body.
As you can imagine, there were people who were upset with how the officer slit the deer’s throat, instead of just putting it down with a gunshot.
The deer was a frequent visitor of the Palm Coast neighborhood, and locals had nicknamed the creature “Baboo.”
This isn’t the first time law enforcement was alerted about the deer, as one man spoke to Sheriff’s deputies on October 1st, saying that a family was keeping the deer as a pet at their house, and it would playfully jump on people. This made the man worry that the deer could potentially be dangerous.
He said he contacted authorities after he saw it walk into a local house. Officers responded, but said the issue was a matter to be taken up with the FWC.
As for this situation, a neighbor called police at 9:39 AM on October 5th, saying the deer had attacked the victim while he was bent forward in his garden, and that it had tried to gore the caller too.
The caller said the victim’s wife was taking him to the hospital for emergency medical treatment.
The deer wasn’t leaving the area of the attack, so the FWC sent staff to find and kill the deer around 10:14 AM, but a Flagler County Sheriff’s Office deputy arrived first.
A responding FCSO deputy said in a report:
“FWC advised me to put it down if I get on scene first, but not to shoot it in the head, as it will need to be tested.”
In the video footage, you can hear the officer say while they were in the process of cutting the deer’s throat:
“This is what happens when people feed deer around here. Now we’ve got to put a deer down because somebody wants to feed them.”
And he’s not wrong, but there’s got to be a better way to do this, right?
The officer also pleaded his case on why they did what they did in the video as well:
“The sad part is, we’ve got to make sure there’s nothing wrong inside, so that’s why we can’t shoot him in the head.”
I’m no expert on CWD, but you just hate to see it go down like this.
WARNING: Graphic content
