Syracuse, NY – A wayward deer threaded its way through downtown Syracuse streets and an automotive repair garage Monday morning, but couldn’t negotiate a fence railing behind another building. The young buck landed six feet below the top of a railing, badly injured. There, a Syracuse police officer destroyed the animal. Police were uncertain how long the deer had roamed...
Syracuse, NY – A wayward deer threaded its way through downtown Syracuse streets and an automotive repair garage Monday morning, but couldn’t negotiate a fence railing behind another building.
The young buck landed six feet below the top of a railing, badly injured. There, a Syracuse police officer destroyed the animal.
Police were uncertain how long the deer had roamed the city and what direction it came from, Sgt. Gary Bulinski said.
What is known is that officials received a call about an injured deer at 10:28 a.m., moments before the animal bounded into the West Willow Street bay doors of Walt’s Automotive Service, Bulinski said. Those doors are across the street from the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
“He almost ran me over,” said Chris Schaber, a mechanic at the garage. Schaber was rewiring a trailer hoisted on a hydraulic lift when the deer brushed past him, maneuvered around tool boxes and benches, ran past a row of cars and out the garage’s West Genesee Street door.
The animal already was bleeding from the face as it sped through the garage, said another mechanic who identified himself only as Matt. He pointed out a trail of blood droplets on the concrete garage floor.
The deer crossed West Genesee Street toward the parking lot behind the Clinton Exchange, the Clinton Square headquarters of The Pyramid Cos. It tried to leap over a line of lilac bushes that separate a brick patio from the exit ramp of the underground garage beneath the office building. It caught a leg on the railing of the fences behind the lilacs and fell to the pavement of the ramp, Matt said.
Police already were on the way when Onondaga County E-911 took a call about 10:31 a.m. that the deer was behind the office building. The two responding officers saw the deer was bleeding from several places. Fearful that it would try to run, injured, back into traffic, the officers put the animal down using a service weapon, Bulinski said.
The deer “looked like a young one,” said Tim Hall, building manager at the Clinton Exchange. "Not more than a couple of years."