ShareThisBy LILLIAN THOMAS
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
When Pennsylvania state police responded to a call about an aggressive deer at a rural home, 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 nearby, with multiple wounds, in and out of consciousness.
Cpl. Todd A. Brian and Trooper Stephen E. Wilcox responded to a 911 call Wednesday morning in Clinton County, in north-central Pennsylvania. 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 Brian.
When they arrived, five or six minutes after the 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, Brian said. He said he believed Rishel is in his 60s and 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 Brian. "Both had multiple puncture wounds, gore wounds and severe facial injuries." Yost's eyes were badly injured.
The troopers wanted to transport Rishel and 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. 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 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.
(Lillian Thomas can be reached at lthomas(at)post-gazette.com.)
