Deer shot by police after rampaging through St. Catherine University

Deer are elusive, sometimes dangerous, and not ready for college classes.

​Here's a problem very few major metropolitan police forces will ever have to think about: A renegade deer broke into a St. Paul college last night and went on a brief rampage while students were still in the building.

St. Paul police put the five-point buck down inside a campus building at St. Catherine University, says Howie Padilla, police spokesman.

"A deer doesn't distinguish between people who are trying to be friendly when it's scared and people trying to hurt it," Padilla told City Pages. "Certainly, in the building, that was a concern of ours."

Police got the call around 6 p.m. Wednesday that the deer had broken through a window in the O'Neil Center, a campus building dedicated to academic support for St. Kate's students.

Apparently frustrated that it couldn't find the support it needed, the buck broke through a sheet rock wall.

When police arrived, the deer was in a building stairwell. They took it
down with a shotgun before it could hurt anybody or cause more damage, says Padilla.

Padilla couldn't speculate where the deer came from or how why it would
have wandered to St. Kate's.

Animals don't necessarily follow our boundaries," he says.