The Newberry Township Police Department shared a video on YouTube showing what happened on January 6th after a couple of officers pulled over a woman and a man who had a live deer in their trunk.
The bizarre incident happened in York County, Pennsylvania, around midnight. It began after the officers got behind the car and suspected the driver was intoxicated, due to the way she was driving, and pulled over the vehicle.
They soon learned that a 19-year-old woman was driving and a 21-year-old man was riding in the passenger seat. After speaking with the two individuals and looking into the vehicle, they quickly realized there was a deer stuffed in the trunk.
“Officers are taught to expect the unexpected during a traffic stop,” Ditty told Newsweek. “But never in our wildest dreams did an officer imagine he’d find a live deer in a vehicle during a traffic stop.”
When they asked the two why they had a live deer in the trunk on their car, they responded by saying they had hit it a few miles back, prior to being pulled over.
After hitting the animal and believing it was dead, they then placed the deer in the trunk of the car and got back to going where they were headed to.
The driver and passenger admitted that they realized the deer was still alive after they drove down the road a few miles, but made the decision to keep driving anyway.
The video footage showed the 21-year-old getting out of the car and walking to the back of the vehicle to open up the trunk.
Two police officers, one on each side of the car, watched as the man picked the deer up in his arms and carried it off to the other side of the road.
He walked off camera, but it appears he was releasing it back into the wild on its own, potentially at the officer’s request.
Lieutenant Braxton Ditty with the Newberry Township Police Department said that both the driver and passenger were very cooperative during that stop.
However, the driver was arrested for suspicion of driving under the influence. Police said there were no injuries during the release of the deer.