He thought Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Hillard was moving in on his woman, but Hillard
promises he wasn’t. Around
11:30 p.m. Sunday, someone in a car stopped Hillard while he patrolled the Mount Ulla area
and said cows were standing in a road.
‘‘It took me 30 minutes
to locate those cows, and when I did, I found three of them in the road,’’
Hillard said.
On Cress Road, the pasture gate
stood open. Hillard herded the cows back into the pasture with only his headlights
lighting the way.
While standing in the pasture,
something big hit Hillard from behind, knocking him into the fence.
‘‘I didn’t know who
it was,’’ Hillard said. ‘‘I just knew it was big. He hit me in the
back. It wasn’t really hard, but it was just hard enough to knock me to the
fence.’’
When Hillard looked around, his
accoster stood on four feet and was bovine in nature – bovine and male.
‘‘I didn’t see the
bull,’’ Hillard said. ‘‘I don’t know where he came from. He
didn’t have horns. Someone must have sawed them off. But I could tell just the way he
was built.
‘‘My thought was to get
back into the patrol car.’’
Trying to get up and back to his
patrol car, Hillard stepped over a ditch. As he did, the bull charged again.
‘‘He caught me head on and slammed me down on the ground,’’ Hillard
said. ‘‘Then he worked his head back and forth.’’
The bull decided that wasn’t
enough and slid Hillard across the ground trying to push him underneath his patrol car.
‘‘I couldn’t fit underneath it, and believe me, that’s where I wanted
to be.’’
Was Hillard afraid? ‘‘I
tell you the truth. I never thought about that. I just thought I never was going to get
away from this bull.’’
The bull backed off. But just when
Hillard thought the bull was done tussling, ‘‘then he got me again. He got me in
the front of the patrol car, and I got him in a head lock.’’
A no-holds-barred match began.
Hillard tried to choke the bull and the bull slid Hillard across the pavement to give the
deputy a little road rash.
The two tussled some more, and
Hillard took the bull in a front headlock. ‘‘It’s like having a tiger by
the tail,’’ Hillard said. ‘‘I was too scared to let go.’’
The bull began throwing Hillard,
and Hillard tried to choke the bull as hard as he could. ‘‘I was choking him
with everything I had,’’ he said, ‘‘and he was throwing me with
everything he had.’’
Finally, the bull started coughing
a little.
Hillard let go. But the bull
wanted more.
‘‘He got me down
again,’’ he said, but Hillard found a way to end the scuffle.
‘‘Then I put a thumb in
his eye.’’
The bull backed off and returned
to the pasture having enough wrestling for the evening. Hillard closed the gate behind him
and patched up the broken fence.
When the fight commenced, Hillard
pushed the emergency button on his radio. Dispatchers tried to raise him. One time when
the bull had him pinned, Hillard managed to reach his radio and told dispatchers he was
involved in a fight with a bull.
‘‘By the time everybody
got there,’’ he said, ‘‘I was driving down the road to the
hospital.’’
Hospital staff declared him fit
other than a few scratches and road rash.
So why did the bull attack him?
‘‘I don’t know,’’ Hillard said. ‘‘The only thing I can
figure out is that he thought I was messing with his women, that I was moving in on his
territory.’’
With a few days off since the
incident, Hillard said the jokes haven’t really started, but that was before he
returned to duty Wednesday night.
‘‘What gets me is that
most people get to arrest someone who does that to him. I don’t think I could pick
him out of arrest line.’’ |
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