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Man charged with assault on sheep

A N. Codorus Twp. man broke into a barn, police said.

By CARYL CLARKE
Daily Record/Sunday News
Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Somebody was making nighttime visits to farmer Terry Patterson's sheep barn in the 600 block of Big Mount Road in Paradise Township, police said.



Patterson told police he saw the evidence of several sexual assaults on his sheep, but never the intruder.

So he installed an alarm and intercom system.

It sounded about 3 a.m. Tuesday. Patterson went to the barn while his wife, Cindy, called 911.

Patterson told Northern York County Regional Police he peered in the barn window and saw a man assaulting a sheep, according to an arrest affidavit filed in District Justice Gerald Shoemaker's office.

Bruce Charles Englar, 53, of the 4600 block of Bentz Road in North Codorus Township, is charged with felony burglary for entering a building with the intention of committing a crime, namely, having sexual intercourse with a sheep.

Officer Patrick Gartrell of Northern Regional Police was patrolling nearby when 911 dispatched him to the Pattersons' home. He heard the farmer yelling in the barn, telling someone to stop. The officer ran toward a man dressed in black and ordered him to stop and put up his hands.

"I found baler's twine in Englar's back pocket, matching the twine that was hanging in the barn," Gartrell wrote in the affidavit.

Police allege the twine was to be used to secure the sheep for sexual intercourse.

Duty District Justice Nancy Edie also arraigned Englar by video camera on charges of criminal attempt to have sex with an animal, criminal trespass, possessing the instruments of crime and loitering and prowling at night.

Englar had parked his car several hundred feet south of the Pattersons' home, jumped over a fence surrounding the barn and walked in, according to the affidavit.

Englar allegedly told police he was just petting the sheep. Northern Regional Lt. Mark Bentzel said it was not a reasonable explanation for being inside somebody's barn at 3 in the morning.

Englar posted $10,000 bail Tuesday for his release from the York County Prison, a spokeswoman said.

PRIOR CASES



· 1997: An Adams County man pleaded guilty to cruelty to animals for sexually assaulting a live turkey in a restroom at the Wampler Foods plant in New Oxford. The man was fined $750. · 1992: A carnival worker was charged with agricultural vandalism after authorities said he had sex with a ram at the York Fair. The charge was later dropped in a plea bargain.