A deer entered Palmer Home Thrift Store in Columbus on Thursday. It did not use the door.
It jumped through one of the 10-foot wide windowpanes that make up the Main Street business’ storefront a little after 9 a.m.
Shattered glass fell. People screamed. Someone called 911.
The deer was a doe, and after its flying entrance, it landed in the store’s register area.
“I just looked up and saw this deer flying toward my manager,” said Josiah Andrews, who works at the store.
Another male employee said it was a “small” doe, a little over three feet tall. But Dee Hanks, the manager in the register area who came face to face with the animal, said, “It looked like a big doe to me.”
After screaming, Hanks sprinted out of the register area. The deer did, too.
It went toward the back of the store.
Heidi Herron, an employee who was in the back of the store making her way to the front, saw it galloping down an aisle and said to herself, “Oh my sweet Jesus.”
When the doe reached the back, it was looking for a way out. It wasn’t getting into the employee’s break room, though, because employee Shakeda Neal had already gotten in there and barricaded the door.
“I locked myself in there. There’s blood back there,” Neal said afterward. She added, “Oh Lord.”
From its collision with glass, the doe had a six-inch gash behind its left shoulder and blood falling from its mouth, Andrews said.
After scampering around a bit and leaving some drops of blood, it finally ran out of an open back door. From there, it crawled beneath a fence and ran into a field. It wasn’t seen again.
It all lasted about three minutes. No injuries, other than to the doe, were reported. Emergency crews were on scene.
According to most employees who witnessed the incident, it was the first time a deer had visited Palmer Home Thrift Store.
“And hopefully the last,” Neal said.
William Browning was managing editor for The Dispatch until June 2016.
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