A female deer broke into the north side of McCain Auditorium through a glass door Thursday night during the “#GetCurious: Life, the Universe and Everything” book lecture. Video footage of the deer’s rampage was quickly spread through a Twitter post by Taryn Clain, freshman in biology.
only at k-state does a deer run through a glass door and into a building to be chased down… pic.twitter.com/4G2EisK5tf
— taryn clain (@tarynnicole00) October 13, 2017
Spencer Weiser, head usher for the lecture and sophomore in political science, was an eyewitness to the occurrence.
“I was hanging out by the table,” Weiser said. “I heard a crashing noise and thought, ‘Well, that’s weird.’ I looked up and the glass was falling down, and then I noticed there was a deer. He just took off down the hallway, doing deer stuff, and hit his head on the broken glass. That’s when he started bleeding.”
“He ran back and started bleeding everywhere,” Weiser continued. “I held open a door for him, but he didn’t use it. He used his head on the [south] door and he got out and ran into traffic.”
Weiser explained his thought process while McCain staffers were trying to secure and protect the deer.
“I was like, ‘Well, okay, let’s get him out and make sure everyone is okay,’ and then I blocked the halls off,” Weiser said.
Coincidentally, Weiser said he had a premonition of the deer’s rampage earlier in the day.
“It’s kind of ironic because I broke a window in my apartment today,” Weiser said. “So I heard glass breaking and my first thought was, ‘Not again.'”
The crash was loud enough to be heard in the auditorium during the lecture, according to people sitting in on the event.
“I was inside the auditorium monitoring the show, when all of a sudden, everyone heard this huge crash,” Rachael Cunningham, junior in mass communications, said. “It sounded like someone had just thrown dishes on the ground. The speaker on stage made a joke about the noise, and the audience laughed. Meanwhile, I was being told in my headset to not let anyone out of the auditorium because a deer was loose inside. I almost didn’t believe it.”
Immediately after the crash, Weiser said he called for custodial services.
“They showed up and asked, ‘Is your maintenance closet open?’ We said yes, and she said, ‘I just brought paper towels and spray, I didn’t know it was this bad,'” Weiser said.
Six other individuals were able to see the deer crashing through the glass door.
“As soon as it happened, I got over radio and said, ‘Hey, don’t let anyone get out,'” Weiser said. “That’s when everyone came out asking what the noise was.”
Todd Holmberg, executive director of McCain Auditorium, said he was unsure where the deer went.
There have been no reports of the deer being found. Eyewitnesses said the deer’s major injuries were cuts on its front legs, and there was also blood coming from its mouth.
