Bull that escaped slaughterhouse taken to animal sanctuary after causing rush-hour chaos on Newark-Penn Station tracks
No bulls–t here.
A Texas Longhorn was spotted running across New Jersey Transit train tracks in Newark Thursday morning, causing delays of up to 45 minutes for commuters heading into the Big Apple.
Reports of the rodeo star running loose at Newark-Penn Station emerged around 10:30 a.m., and he remained on the tracks for about an hour before he was captured and taken to an animal sanctuary, police said.
Officials with New Jersey Transit alerted commuters to the bizarre incident on X, writing “rail service is subject to up to 45-minute delays between Newark Penn and PSNY, due to Police activity near Newark Penn Station.”
Humorously addressing the delay, NJ Transit wrote, “Police activity” above a photo of the out-of-place bull seemingly staring straight at the camera.
A station announcer can be heard in one video telling travelers, “Due to an obstruction on the tracks all trains are subject to delays” while the baffled bovine ran up and down the tracks along the platform as travelers filmed on their cellphones.
The runaway bull escaped from a slaughterhouse in Newark, CBS 880 reported.
Officers with the Newark Police Emergency Services Unit and the Port Authority Police Department tracked down the bull and contained it inside of a fenced lot “without incident,” according to Newark Public Safety Director Fritz Fragé.
No injuries were reported, cops said.
The cow was taken to Skylands Animal Sanctuary and Rescue in Wantage, where he was “safe, but heavily sedated,” the organization wrote in a Facebook post showing the bull laying in a pile of hay.
Skylands founder Mike Stura named the beast “Ricardo” after one of the Newark police officers on the scene who helped him coordinate to get the steer to the sanctuary, he told The Post.
Stura said his phone blew up with hundreds of calls when the loose bull’s bizarre appearance at the busy train station went viral on social media Thursday morning.
“I drove him straight to the vet. I wanted to get him a reverser drug for the sedatives they’d given him and he also needs a bunch of tests done to make sure he is safe to go with other animals,” Stura said.
Ricardo is a roughly 1.5-year-old Texas longhorn steer — meaning a bull who has been castrated — weighing in between 750 and 800 pounds, Stura said.
Ricardo must have escaped from a local slaughterhouse, he believes.
“He had to be from a slaughterhouse or a transport truck over there,” he said, noting that there are several in the area.
“I personally did not see any slaughterhouse people but I believe the police worked with them because after they tranquilized [Ricardo] somebody hogtied him, and that was not the police,” ” Stura added. “I don’t know if that was some kind of transport truck worker or slaughterhouse worker or what.
Newark police said they first responded to a report of a loose bull on Frelinghuysen Avenue near Victoria Street, which is right next to Victoria Livestock and Poultry and the New Jersey Transit train tracks.
When contacted by The Post, the abattoir declined to comment, with a receptionist saying the owner was not there before hanging up.
Over the next few days, Ricardo will be quarantined from the other animals until the sanctuary receives his test results back.
Stura said then he’ll spend some time with the bull learning his personality before deciding which group of bulls and cows he will live with.
“Hopefully he’ll get along well and live a long, happy life here,” he said.
Skylands is a 232-acre farm home to nearly 450 animals, including cows and bulls, sheep, goats, horses and chickens in rural Suffolk County — about 55 miles northwest of Newark.
The sanctuary is also the home of Barney, a bull who busted out of a Long Island farm in July 2021 the night before he was scheduled to be slaughtered and evaded capture for more than two months.
The 1,500-pound bull escaped a farm in Manorville in Suffolk County in July, and eluded cops and animal rescue workers for weeks, hoofing it through a wooded area and nearby suburbs despite police launching helicopter and drone searches.
He was finally captured in September 2021 at the same farm he escaped from and brought to the sanctuary, where he is living out his remaining days.
