Hunter refuses to get out of train's way

To some guys, deer hunting season means everything.

A Towpath Road man who was hunting shortly after 4 p.m. Monday was arrested after he refused to get off train tracks for an oncoming train because he was preparing to shoot a deer.

Rather than get out of the way, 68-year-old Terrence T. Bruno put his hand up to halt the train as he lined up a shot at a whitetail deer, police said.

Washington County Sheriff Roger Leclaire said the train was able to apply its brakes and come to a stop before it could strike Bruno. Bruno then stepped off the tracks, allowing the train to resume its trip.

"You've got to be a pretty serious deer hunter to do something like that," Leclaire said.

Bruno was charged with trespass by Canadian Pacific Railway Police, said Supt. Joseph Bender of the railway police. He also was charged by state Department of Environmental Conservation police with not carrying a hunting license.

http://www.poststar.com/story.asp?storyid=2098

wow....

"You've got to be a pretty serious deer hunter to do something like that," Leclaire said.

You've got to be out of your friggin mind to do something like that, I say.

We had a similar incident just outside Hamburg, NY the other day, a women was driving drunk when her car got "hung up" on the tracks at a crossing. She was so out of it that she refused to get out of her car when the cops tried to remove her, as a train was approaching. Here's a link to the story:
http://www.wkbw.com/Story.aspx?preview= ... oryID=7764

Before hiring on with CSX I spent 20 years in law enforement, this just re-enforces my beliefs that people are generally STUPID by nature, add in the element of drugs or alcohol and that just multiplies that ignorance. I'm surprised they didn't charge him under homeland security for interfering with Interstate comerce, not to mention weapons charges.
Personally it is somewhat unnerving to ride the locomotive down the tracks this time of year, with armed and dangerous people wandering all around our ROW.

they should have run him over.

From Engineers perspective you don't know if the guy does not want to move or can not move. so stopping will be tried.
A person is very small viewed from a locomotive, maybe the smuck has his foot stuck. untill you stop you never know, and if he did and you make no attempt to stop you hang for murder, its bad enough the average engineer will kill two people in his/her career by accident.

Serious hunter? Seriously! No serious hunter would put himself in harms way and no serious hunter would be out there without a hunting license! The guy is a plain and simple jerk, that's all. He is lucky, too. The train stopped before hitting him! That's lucky not serious hunting.

I'm glad he was cited for his stupidity!

SimTrains wrote:We had a similar incident just outside Hamburg, NY the other day, a women was driving drunk when her car got "hung up" on the tracks at a crossing. She was so out of it that she refused to get out of her car when the cops tried to remove her, as a train was approaching. Here's a link to the story:
http://www.wkbw.com/Story.aspx?preview= ... oryID=7764

I remember a similar story about 30 years ago (OUCH!!) when I was a teenager hanging out at the bars at Sunset Bay. Some guy hung up his brand new car on the Allegany Road tracks. 3 girls tried to help him get his new car off the tracks and couldn't. A train was coming, the girls got out of the way, the guy got back in his car for one last try, and that was the end of him and his car. Must have really loved the car, or had no insurance

"It was unknown Tuesday whether he managed to shoot the deer he was apparently targeting."

They don't even know if he shot that damn deer. Keep us in suspense will ya.

I take a "Far Side Comic" perspective on this. The buck should have been operating the train and just kept going while giving his parnter a "high five."

Reminds me of a quote from Einstein.

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

SST wrote:I take a "Far Side Comic" perspective on this. The buck should have been operating the train and just kept going while giving his parnter a "high five."

Yeah, I could see that! Pretty funny

Calorosome wrote:

Reminds me of a quote from Einstein.

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

After 15 years of PD dispatching I could write a book full of similar incidents to this one. Oh well, as long as there are stupid people I know I'll always have my job!

Totally off topic but that book would sell quite well i bet.

Yes...just a bit off-topic. I do apologize.

Of course the book would open with this rail-related incident:

It's 0530 in the morning and another midnight shift is just about to wrap up. It's been very quiet all night when the radio silence was broken by our shift commander coming on the air with this:

'Unit ** to HQ. I was just hit by a train.' Very calm, very casual...no excitement in his voice whatsoever. My partner and I looked at each in disbelief, replayed the call to make sure that's what we really heard, and then contacted the sergeant to make sure he (and anyone else involved) weren't injured. No injuries, very minor damage to the locomotive, and very serious damage to the patrol car. Turns out the sergeant was on an interior eyelid inspection and parked in a relatively desolate section of town to conduct that inspection. His vehicle was parked in such a way that just the trunk of the car was blocking one rail. What he forgot was that that was a newly reinstated section of railroad that saw it's first train out around 0530 every morning. Anyway the sergeant is conducting his inspection, the train begins moving out, and just clips the rear of the patrol car at about 5 mph. It must have been a pretty intense inspection for the sergeant not to have heard the locomotive horn. Anyway, it ended his inspection, the various reports were taken, and that was that.

Just another day............