Ray County deputies shot, killed loose cows that ‘posed threat to human life’: Sheriff
.jpg "Deputies shot and killed two cows near Highway M on Thursday after they were unable to find the owner or move them to a fenced area, according to Ray County Sheriff Scott Childers.")
Ray County Sheriff Scott Childers says his department was faced with a bit of a dilemma on Thursday.
A person called the sheriff’s department out to M Highway to investigate a report of a near-miss between a vehicle and a loose cow wandering in the road. Two cows were found there and deputies were instructed to shoot them dead after failed attempts to locate the owner or get them into a fenced area, Childers said in a video statement on Facebook on Friday afternoon.
After herding the cows over to an open field, Childers said his deputies spent about two hours searching for the owners, knocking on doors out on a chilly day as well as calling local dispatch. But while that issue was still unresolved, the deputies were called to an emergency for a domestic situation somewhere else in the county, Childers said.
The sheriff said he made the decision to shoot the cows, estimated to be 1,000 pounds apiece, as they “posed a threat to human life” because of the hilly, curvy road at dark and the possibility that they might again obstruct the roadway. And he said if that had not been done, a fatal or serious injury crash could have happened.
“It stinks. I know that there’s at least one person who was very upset with the decision that I had to make,” Childers said in his video posted on the sheriff’s office Facebook page, adding: “We don’t have a lot of resources, so we have to be resourceful. I have to put human life over anything else.”
Childers added that he had begun to make arrangements for the cows to be butchered so the meat could be donated to those in need in time for the holidays. But he said the cows had begun to spoil by the time he was able to get back to the area, citing a busy work schedule over recent days, and that was no longer an option.
The sheriff pointed to the outcome as an example of how the county’s livestock registry needs to be updated. He also asked for any farmers or ranchers in Ray County to contact him if they would like to offer help to transport and temporarily care for wandering livestock in the future.
