Police: Cow found speared to death in Hempfield Township

State police in Greensburg are trying to determine who impaled an Angus cow with a piece of farm machinery and left it to die at a Hempfield farm this month.

“We have no leads, but I can tell you that whoever did this was extremely cruel,” Trooper Stephen Limani said Monday. “We can also tell you that whoever did this had to know how to work a hydraulic lift that was on this farm tractor. … It appears it was deliberate, and we believe more than one person was involved.”

The incident occurred between 3 and 4 a.m. Feb. 12 in a field along Matt Shields Road, Limani said.

The cow’s owner said he went to the farm around 5 p.m. after the property owner called and questioned why he had been driving a tractor on the property around 4 a.m. The tractor is equipped with hydraulic lifts used to lift bales of hay, Limani said.

The cow’s owner told the property owner he was not driving a tractor at that time.

When he arrived, the cow’s owner found a tractor parked roughly 200 feet from the gate to the cow pasture. He told police the cow pasture gate was damaged. He also found his cow dead.

Limani said troopers reported the cow had two wounds and investigators believe it was impaled by the two forks on the tractor. The cow had been speared through the back, left side of its body and the front left shoulder.

The property owner told the cow’s owner there was a pickup following the tractor.

The cow was valued at about $1,000, police said.

Anyone with information is asked to call state police at 724-832-3288.