By Mary Weston
Oroville (Calif.) Mercury Register
OROVILLE, Calif. - An unidentified Palermo man was flown to Enloe Medical Center this morning after a runaway bull gored him.
The bull was shot after it became aggressive with public safety personnel, charging everyone in sight.
Cal Fire-Butte County spokesperson Captain Scott McLean said he didn’t know the victim’s name or the name of the man who owned the bull.
The victim had been trying to herd the bull back onto a neighbor’s property when the animal turned on him, McLean said.
The bull had escaped from the neighbor’s property and came onto the victim’s property at 444 Junes Way.
After the bull gored the man in the leg, he ran and jumped over a barbed wire fence into a pasture, leaving the angry bull in the street.
The man called 9-1-1 on his cell phone, and a Cal Fire-Butte County engine and crew responded to the area south of Palermo. Firefighters found the bull standing in the middle of the road, McLean said.
They were able to get over the fence to check on the man. An ambulance arrived, and the bull became aggressive, charging a bright yellow gurney, tossing it in the air.
Firefighters and medics were able to get to the man across the fence and load him into the FlightCare helicopter also summoned to the scene.
Safety personnel herded the bull into another pasture, but McLean said it broke down the fence an escaped again.
Sgt. Paul Laveto said Animal Control called in deputies to shoot the bull because it was so aggressive.
At one point, California Highway Patrol Sgt. Al Sanders said the firefighters climbed on top of a fire engine while one brave firefighter held the bull off by spraying it with a fire hose.
Sanders said they corralled the bull in the owner’s yard.
“They did everything they could do to restrain the animal without dispatching it, but they didn’t have any other choice,” Sanders said. “They couldn’t leave it there. It would have been like leaving a dangerous pit bull in the street.”