THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 27, 1995 TAG: 9512270092
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Short : 46 lines
An employee at Grease Monkey, an auto repair shop, was stunned Tuesday when he walked outside, opened a rear trash bin and found the damaged carcasses of a doe and her small fawn.
The deer were dumped either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day and appeared to have been killed intentionally - but not by hunters, said Michael Brown, assistant manager of Grease Monkey, located on a busy stretch of Virginia Beach Boulevard northwest of Oceana Naval Air Station.
``They left all the meat; they didn't take anything of value,'' Brown said. ``The whole thing's just wasteful, and pretty sad if you ask me. For some reason, somebody wanted to destroy these animals.''
The city's animal control division was expected to retrieve and properly dispose of the deer late Tuesday, said officer Paul Taylor. He said whoever killed the doe and fawn violated at least one state law: Dumping dead animals on private property is illegal.
Taylor noted that hunting season is open in Virginia until Jan. 6 and that perhaps the deer were hit by a speeding car. Such accidents are increasing in Virginia Beach, he said, as the local deer population grows and the city loses more of its forest cover to development.
But Brown said the deer showed no signs of a collision. The fawn had few marks on her - except on her back legs, which had been skinned. The doe, meanwhile, was cut nearly in half, with her hindquarters and hips missing, Brown said.
He noted that the nearest forest is ``miles away'' and that he could see no gunshot wounds in either deer. ``Somebody must have drove them here and dumped them out back in our dumpster,'' he said.
Sharon Wagner, education director at the Virginia Beach Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said the incident sounded malicious.
``The most frightening thing is that this obviously intentional act does not usually stop at animals,'' Wagner said. ``Most people who are cruel to animals move on to people. The correlation of abuse is very high.''
Brown said he was especially saddened because the act took place over Christmas. His trash bin, he said, was clean when the store closed Saturday night for the holidays. by CNB