Rampaging Bulls Storm Sacramento....(True Story)

Funniest Thing I Have Read In a Long Time........

Rampaging bulls injure officer - Child saved as State Fair crowd watches

(Sacramento Bee) By Dorothy Korber and Bobby Caina Calvan

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Two rampaging bulls broke free from their steel pen at the California State Fair on Sunday night -- then tossed a 55-year-old police officer in the air, trampled a horse and terrified a grandstand full of onlookers.

As the bulls snorted and raged, one rodeo clown scooped up a small child and carried him over a fence to safety. The animals escaped shortly before the 7 p.m. "Dancing With Bulls" event, where trained rodeo clowns exhibit their skill in an organized competition. The bulls broke loose as children were leaving the rodeo arena, following a "coin dig" where kids gathered up 100 dollar coins tossed on the grounds.

Seeing the charging bulls, Cal Expo Police Officer Pam Irey began waving her arms to urge onlookers out of the animals' path, said Brian May, the fair's deputy general manager. He called Irey a hero. "Her instinct as a police officer was to warn people," May said. "She waved her arms, drew the attention of the bulls and was charged herself."

She was taken by ambulance to UC Davis Medical Center and treated for a minor concussion, broken ribs and abrasions. Irey, who also is a Sacramento County sheriff's sergeant and a trustee on the Elk Grove Unified School District Board, remained in the hospital late Monday, where she was listed in good condition. Her daughter Shelby, 16, watched the terror unfold while preparing for a flag ceremony in the staging area with nearly two dozen members of the sheriff's Explorers program, which introduces young people to law enforcement. "My mom grabbed a 5-year-old boy and tossed him over the fence to a cowboy so he wouldn't be trampled," she said. "She distracted the bulls from another Explorer." Then the bull turned at her mother, who oversees the youth Explorers. "My mom wasn't sure where to go. The bull charged her. She couldn't run fast enough, and the bull hit her," the teen said. "I felt sick in my stomach," she recalled. "My daughter's instinct was to save my mom. I tried to help her, but I was pulled back."

The charging bulls never entered the arena but spread havoc in a backstage area. That was where the injured horse was attacked; it was treated by veterinarians on the scene and will survive, May said. The spectacle was traumatic for witnesses, said state worker Eva Knight. The 38-year-old Citrus Heights resident was in the audience with her husband. "Everybody was shocked -- people were moving up the grandstands and trying to leave," Knight said. She saw the attack on Irey: "The lady was running -- the bull came behind her and flipped her up like a little rag doll." Knight said there was another hero on the scene that night. "The first thing I saw was a bull heading straight for this little kid," Knight recounted. "He was about 4, and he'd been picking up the money in the arena. A rodeo clown ran into the bull's path, grabbed the kid, and just sailed over the fence to safety. I was amazed at how fast and how agile that clown was."

The clown was Tommy Charters, a veteran of the rodeo since his teens.

"The kids started scattering," Charters said Monday. "A 5-year-old boy was running. I just picked him up. The bulls were headed straight for us." Charters pitched the boy to bystanders at a corner. The bulls continued charging, Charters said, hitting him in the hip. Ignoring his own injury, he ran to aid the fallen officer.

Cotton Rosser, whose Marysville-based Flying U Rodeo staged "Dancing With Bulls," said the animals escaped into a staging area where a handful of young children awaited the next event: a "mutton busting" competition. All of the clowns risked their own safety to help others threatened by the bulls, said Rosser, who didn't see the ruckus himself. He was on his roan stallion Old Blue, greeting fans as they entered the arena. "The bulls got out, and the clowns grabbed all the people from the staging area," Rosser said. "They did a fantastic job, getting all the people out of way. There were a lot of heroes. All those clowns were heroes." Rosser said the bulls' escape is unprecedented in his 40-year rodeo career. The animals got loose by lifting metal panels, held together with pins, that formed their enclosure. As if working in unison, they stuck their heads through the 100-pound panels and lifted them apart.

"We've never had that happen, never in my life," Rosser said. "Those panels are heavy."

Rodeo hands and cow dogs worked together to round up the bulls, which continued to rage and bellow even after they were loaded into trailers, according to Knight. She had trouble sleeping after watching the pandemonium. "For those bulls, anything that was moving was fair game," she said. "I just couldn't stop thinking about it." But, for an old hand like Rosser, it was all in a day's work. "We're not used to bulls getting out, but we work in an extreme business," Rosser said. "That's their job, you see," he said, referring to the rodeo clowns. "In the rodeo business, it's not if you get hurt, it's when."