What a bunch of bull!
Amtrak and New Jersey Transit commuters on both sides of the Hudson River found themselves delayed Thursday after a bull in Newark managed to break loose and run amok on the train tracks at Newark-Penn Station on Thursday morning.
An Amtrak spokesperson said train service was halted for about 40 minutes in the Newark area as the bull moseyed about on the station’s tracks, but has since been removed and service has resumed. Newark Penn is a stop on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, the nation’s busiest intercity passenger rail service.
There is a loose bull on the tracks at Newarks Penn Station as authorities try to catch it. All tracks delayed pic.twitter.com/In7D6dm6e6
— Ｎｅｒｄｙ 🅰🅳🅳🅸🅲🆃 (@Nerdy_Addict) December 14, 2023
A spokesperson for NJ Transit, which also uses Newark Penn, said service has resumed but commuters could face delays of up to 45 minutes due to the time service was halted amid the bull run. NJ Transit tickets are being cross-honored on the PATH train.
Newark’s Public Safety Director, Fritz Fragé, said police deployed at about 10:45 a.m. to a fenced lot at Frelinghuysen Avenue and Victoria Street, about 3 miles away from the train station. Newark and Port Authority cops managed to contain and capture the bull, whom Fragé said will be taken to a local animal sanctuary.
The Skylands Animal Sanctuary posted on Facebook that it had rescued the bull and brought it back to its oasis in rural Sussex County. The sanctuary wrote that the bull, whom it named Ricardo, is “safe, but heavily sedated.”
In an interview, Skylands owner Mike Stura said the bull had been tranquilized by authorities before he arrived in Newark. Stura took Ricardo to a veterinarian en route to the sanctuary, where he was given antibiotics, got a blood test, and was administered a drug to reverse the tranquilizer effects.
“He’s on the mend, hopefully. The next few days will tell a lot,” Stura told amNewYork Metro. “He will now be quarantined until we get the okay from the vet for all the tests. And when he gets the okay, we’ll decide what herd he needs to go with and he’ll join them, and hopefully he’ll have a good, long life.”
It’s not yet clear how the bull ended up on the tracks. But the capture location is just down the street from a halal meatpacking facility, and video showed the bull has a yellow tag on its horn typical of animals set for slaughter. Stura said he has rescued many slaughterhouse escapees over the years.
“I don’t have any other explanation other than he may have come from a slaughterhouse, or he got out of a transport truck somehow,” said Stura. “But there are definitely some slaughterhouses nearby where he was.”
This story has been updated with comment from Skylands Sanctuary owner Mike Stura.
