Deer Crashes Through Restaurant Window While Family Eats

Deer have been on the absolute rampage for the past few weeks since they've been in rut, and a case from Tennessee just adds to the pile of stories of deer vandalizing stores.

As a family was sitting down to eat dinner in a Martin, Tennessee restaurant, a deer crashed through the plate glass window, tearing open the shoulder of a 13-year-old girl, and terrorizing other customers for a few minutes.

"I hear a crash, and a deer is coming through the window," said Alicia Owens of Medina, Tennessee, "and it got up and was going crazy!"

The buck's back hoof caught the shoulder of 13-year-old Ruby Hayes, opening a deep gash that required 11 stitches to close at West Tennessee Healthcare Volunteer Hospital. She went home after receiving the stitches.

The Hayes, Owens and her daughter Ava, were all eating all together at The Grind after the girls finished a middle school basketball game when the deer broke through the glass.

"It’s sliding on the glass, it can’t get its footing. It’s frantically trying to get up," Owens said. "I couldn’t comprehend it was actually a deer. We’re in the middle of town, across the street from the University of Tenneee Martin. It’s like, what in the world?"

In the security footage, Ruby immediately falls to the ground and slides out of the way when the deer comes through the window, slicing her shoulder with its hoof.

The deer ran through the restaurant until it eventually made it to the back of the restaurant toward a patio, where a patron shot the deer fatally with a handgun.

"Ruby was shaking a lot. But she never cried," said Owens, who applied pressure to the wound while Bryan Hayes drove them to the hospital. "She just really didn’t know what hit her."

Read more at The Tennessean

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