'It made me feel really sick, actually, where we couldn’t watch anymore,' the witness said. 'We turned up the music a little bit in the truck so we wouldn’t hear the screaming of the deer.'
GLOBAL NEWS: ‘A woman in Lethbridge, Alta., captured a disturbing incident on her cellphone of a police officer running over a deer multiple times with his patrol vehicle as the animal lay dying on a street in the city’s north end. Erica Pritchard said she was driving with her father along Scenic Drive North in the late hours of Jan. 5 when she witnessed a car slam into the rear end of a young deer, apparently breaking its back legs. Pritchard said no humans were hurt in the incident, but when the Lethbridge officer arrived on the scene she was shocked to see the officer run back and forth over the injured animal twice with his truck.
In the almost 15-minute video, shared exclusively with Global News, the officer runs over the injured animal slowly with his truck at least four additional times… Roughly seven minutes later, the young deer raises its head and attempts to struggle to its feet before falling to the ground. The vehicle then runs back and forth over the animal twice more before stopping on top of the animal. The video ends with the officer exiting his vehicle and dragging the animal to the side of the road before driving off.
“It made me feel really sick, actually, where we couldn’t watch anymore,” Pritchard said. “We turned up the music a little bit in the truck so we wouldn’t hear the screaming of the deer.” It is unclear why the officer did not use his standard issue sidearm to kill the injured deer. Lethbridge police Chief Robert Davis said the incident was being referred to the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) for investigation…
Calgary-based lawyer Stefanie Stamm told Global News that she believes the officer in the video broke the law. Stamm is on maternity leave from HD Law Group and serves on the board of advisors for Animal Justice Canada. “The fact that it was a police officer who actually was violating specific laws that he was sworn to uphold is disgusting,” she said. “This police officer should have criminal charges laid against him.”.’ SOURCE…