Police shoot stag near Antrim Grammar

Police shoot deat a wild stag on the grounds of Antrim Grammar School.

“Several attempts were made to safely and humanely manage the animal,” a PSNI spokesperson said.

“Regrettably, after consultation with the vet working with officers at the scene, we were required to shoot the stag as it had become very agitated and posed a risk to the public.”

The Police Ombudsman has been informed.

Greg Kayne, chairman of the British Deer Society in Northern Ireland, told the BBC: “The professionals on the ground would have had to make a risk assessment and that risk assessment would have been focused on public safety.

“Unpalatable though the outcome was for the deer, it sounds as though they had few if any options other than to do what they actually had to do.”

School principal Hilary Woods said: “We had to basically keep the school in lockdown until the situation was resolved, and there were a number of pupils who were obviously very distressed when they heard about the final outcome,” she said.

“It actually ran past some of the pupils when they were outside.

“It could have caused damage and it would have been far worse for me as a principal to deal with, if a child or a member of the public had been injured.”