Beef On The Lam After Milking Freedom For All It’S Worth, Cattle Headed Back To The Pen

Tue., Jan. 5, 1999

By Robin Rivers robinr@spokesman.com

Spokane police captured five escapees Monday after a treacherous four-hour citywide hunt.

The unidentified escape artists who bolted away from their trailer about 4 p.m. shocked local motorists along Trent Avenue and residents in nearby neighborhoods as they boldly rammed cars and raced through back yards.

Police hunted them on foot and by car with searchlights in the icy night.

The elusive bunch were wrestled down, one by one, literally roped and caged after charging officers and civilians alike.

These were no common criminals, mind you. They were cows - angry, spitting, snorting cows who saw a chance and took it, running away from the Colville rancher picking them up from a Spokane stockyard.

“Maybe they were going to the butcher and knew it,” said Spokane Police Sgt. Dan Torok.

The escapade began as the rancher pulled away from Stockland Union Stockyard, 1004 N. Freya St., about 4 p.m.

“I loaded them into the trailer and his side gate wasn’t shut right,” said stockyard worker Shelly Wright. “Somehow, they got away.”

Wright, a few wranglers and a half-dozen police officers spent their evening canvassing ice-slicked streets for the four-hoofed fiends.

The cows charged several vehicles on Trent Avenue, but neither steel nor flesh was damaged. They frightened neighborhood dogs and slowed traffic to a crawl.

They traversed highways, Felts Field runways, river banks and parks with police in pursuit.

One broke through a fence near Airport and Commerce about 6 p.m. and seemed to disappear, leaving officers to hunt for hoof prints in the snow.

After bringing traffic at Indiana and Hamilton to a screeching halt, the fourth of five escapees wound up snorting and stamping in between two houses and four police cars about 7 p.m. in the 800 block of North Indiana.

The rancher backed his rig in, Wright went for the ropes and the beast went, kicking and screaming, into the trailer.

“One more left,” Wright called out as everyone went running. “No time to lose.”

In the end, the cantankerous cows were captured and confined.

They will not face criminal charges.

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