On April 21, two cows escaped on the Ohio State campus while being unloaded at the OSU Veterinary Hospital. After a two-hour chase, OSU police finally caught the rambunctious cows, after firing four bullets into one of them.
Travis Dennison and his family purchased Libby, 11, and Felicity, 12, about four years ago to breed, Dennison said. On their family farm, they own about 40 Belted Galloway beef cows, like Libby and Felicity.
Libby is the one police shot — and she’s three to four months pregnant.
She became aggressive, so police decided they might have to use deadly force. Dennison was at Vivian Hall with the police and knew they were ready to shoot, but he did not want them to.
“She is worth $2,000, so I would lose two grand if she died,” Dennison said. “And she’s pregnant, so that’s an extra $800 or $900 I would lose.”
The cows escaped from their trailer while Dennison was unloading them. He backed his trailer up to the loading area, but the cows wouldn’t cooperate.
Vet Hospital officials say Dennison was alone and opened the side door to the trailer to climb inside and push the cows into the building.
“There are many veterinarians and veterinary students that could have helped had they been out there, but the owner chose to open the door without anybody else,” said Melissa Weber, the director of communications and marketing for the College of Veterinary Medicine.
Dennison says that’s not true.
“I’m sure they wanted to say whatever they can to make them not look bad, but I’m not going to sit here and make it look like my fault,” he said. “There were at least six people out there with me.”
Veterinary Hospital faculty member Dr. Austin Hinds said he told Dennison at least three times not to open the door, according to the police report.
However, Dennison said he was standing next to a veterinarian who started “messing with the side door of the trailer” and opened it.
After the cows escaped, the vet said not to worry because the area was fenced in. Dennison quickly realized the parking lot gates were open. The cows fled and headed down John H. Herrick Drive into the practice fields next to Lincoln Tower.
Police and veterinary staff caught Felicity at the practice fields, but when they tried to corral Libby at Vivian Hall, she became aggressive.
Libby charged and two officers fired four shots each, aiming at her head, shoulders and neck area, according to the police report. They only hit Libby four times.
“They were bad shots,” Dennison said. “The police had absolutely no idea what to do.”
Dr. Michael Barrie, the director of animal health at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium who was called to the scene to tranquilize Libby, said he believed the cow would die after she was shot.
“I thought she was going to be injured and die, so we stood back,” he said. “We waited another 20 to 30 minutes, and the cow didn’t seem to be affected by the bullets.”
Police used M4 rifles that fire .223 rounds, and Barrie said he thinks she did not die because “the caliber of bullets was not large enough for an animal that size.”
Henry Zerby, an assistant professor in OSU’s Department of Animal Sciences, said although he didn’t witness the whole ordeal, he thinks the shots could have been avoided.
“If the cow needed to be shot, it should have been shot to render the animal insensible rather than shots that could lead to pain and suffering,” he said.
Deputy Police Chief Richard Morman said police did a fine job.
“We felt it was a public safety issue, and I think we did a very good job of saving the animals’ lives and keeping our people from being injured,” he said.
Despite the trauma, Libby is alive and healthy and still three to four months pregnant, Dennison said.
Dennison took his cows home immediately after they were caught. About a week after that, a vet from OSU called and asked him to bring Libby back to be examined.
Veterinarians removed one bullet that was lodged in her ribs. They also trimmed her hooves — the procedure Dennison initially took his cows to the hospital for. The hospital didn’t charge him.
“Her wounds are healing, she behaved very well, and our veterinarians said she is going to be just fine,” said Kristine McComis, the communications coordinator for the OSU Veterinary Hospital.
Some OSU students say agricultural sciences students and staff could have corralled the cows with less commotion.
“Students from the agriculture campus could have rounded the Belted Galloways up in a matter of minutes,” said Anna Hall, a second-year in agricultural communications. “Instead, the police scared them with police cars, took two hours, and then had to tranquilize one.”
Those students don’t understand anything about veterinarians, Weber said.
“To assume a veterinarian doesn’t know how to handle an animal is kind of like saying a pediatrician wouldn’t know how to handle a child,” she said.
The cows should not have been chased because then they think someone is going to kill them, said Steven Silberberg, a former U.S. Belted Galloway Society councilman. Silberberg said a bucket of grain and a kind word goes a lot farther than being chased by cars.
“They are creatures of prey, not predators,” he said. “They pose no threat to humans. Just let them be and they will come.”
However, Dr. Andrew Niehaus, a surgeon in the Farm Animal Hospital at the Veterinary Medical Center who was involved in the chase, has a different view.
“In their frightened state, these cows had one objective: to not be caught,” he said. “They had no qualms about turning and removing people or objects from their way. These cows had no interest in eating.”
Belted Galloway is a breed of beef cows that originated in Scotland about 300 years ago, Silberberg said. They are smart, resilient and protective of the herd and young. They are docile and work easily with people, he said.
But Dennison said Libby is not as tame as his other cows and is not the easiest to deal with.
“Regardless of how this breed normally acts, it was not a normal situation for them, which was exacerbated when they encountered crowds of people, others chasing after them, flashing lights, noises from helicopters,” Zerby said.
A minute-by-minute of the events
On April 21, Dennison arrived at the hospital to have Libby and Felicity’s hooves trimmed, a procedure Niehaus said is common for cows and sometimes medically necessary.
Dennison backed his trailer up to the hospital’s unloading chute. It was docked securely with the trailer, but because the two cows were not used to being transported, they were reluctant to walk down the chute.
Dennison said he had been to the hospital several times before with other cows and knew the procedure. He didn’t think there would be any problems.
Whether or not Dennison opened the door on his own, both cows ran from the hospital parking lot to the practice fields just east of Lincoln Tower around 2 p.m., according to the police report.
When two OSU officers, Brandon Yankanin and Capt. Eric Whiteside, arrived at the field, they saw one cow charge and strike a white female and flip her in the air. The cows butted at least a half dozen people who were trying to capture them. The officers then began to move spectators out of the area to calm the cows.
“The cows did not respect fences and they didn’t respect any of the people trying to corral them,” Niehaus said. “They knew that we were weaker than they were and they were not afraid to charge us.”
The police drove their cruisers onto the field. Yankanin, Whiteside and two other officers used the cars to wrangle the cows toward Dennison’s trailer “by using a wedge or diamond formation, but had negative results,” the police report said.
At some point, Libby fled the practice fields and ended up near Vivian Hall.
Meanwhile, Felicity moved to the corner of the practice field. There, police were able to block her in with their vehicles. She was tranquilized by a pole-syringe that allows injections from 4 feet away, Niehaus said.
At about 2:40 p.m., a veterinary staff member lassoed Felicity and police nudged her into the trailer with a cruiser.
Once Felicity was in the trailer, police moved to Vivian Hall to get Libby. She had already shown aggressive behavior by bucking helpers and ramming a cruiser that Officer Stephen Cox was in.
Cox was the only person with reported injuries on the scene — he sustained a fractured shoulder blade and fractured rib, Police Chief Paul Denton said.
When police arrived, they loaded their guns. Meanwhile, experts from the Columbus Zoo were called to bring a tranquilizer gun. The vet hospital doesn’t have one.
Barrie arrived at 2:53 p.m. with an assistant. Police told him they intended to use lethal force if Libby acted aggressively again.
Before police approached the cow with Barrie to administer the tranquilizer, they positioned themselves so they would shoot toward a filled metal dumpster or a dirt mound. Police also cleared out the Vivian Hall parking lot of bystanders.
Barrie, along with two officers, approached Libby, and “the cow advanced on us and the officers fired their weapons,” Barrie said.
Libby stood still, then took a few steps back. Two more police officers stood guard with shotguns in case she charged a second time.
When Barrie realized she wasn’t going to die, he approached her from an angle where she couldn’t see him coming, he said. He got within 35 feet of Libby and shot the tranquilizer gun.
Fifteen minutes later, at 3:37 p.m., Libby began stumbling, and Niehaus was able to put a lasso around her neck.
After both cows were safely in the trailer, Dennison headed back to his farm without ever having the cows’ hooves trimmed or the wounds thoroughly examined.
Dennison said he will continue to take his cows to OSU.
“It is still a good clinic,” he said, “and I don’t think anyone was really completely at blame.”
