BERWICK, Pa. — The school day was disrupted for a district in Columbia County when a deer crashed into a middle school.
A deer crashed through a window in the Berwick Area Middle School shortly before 9 a.m. Wednesday.
Officers said the buck jumped through a window into a sixth grade classroom. No students were inside the classroom at the time, but a teacher was sitting at his desk, about one foot away from where the deer jumped through the window.
"He happened to be seated at his desk, and it came through a window directly behind where he was seated," said Berwick Area SD Police Supervisor Greg Daily. "Ran down the hallway into an open classroom at the end of the hallway with a small group that was in it with some students and a teacher. When the deer entered that classroom, they evacuated and closed the door and trapped the animal inside there."
Daily says at that time, there was an emergency alert telling everyone there was an animal in the building.
School officials assured parents on a Facebook post, saying the situation was "non-threatening."
"We evacuated all the students in that wing to other areas of the school and cornered off the hallways."
At that point, area police departments showed up and entered the classroom. The deer was led out to the school's courtyard and into the parking lot, where it was taken by the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
No one was hurt.
Daily says if this had happened five minutes earlier, there would have been students in the hallways.
"Classes were in session, so most of those doors were shut already, and there was no one in the hallways."
The excitement was over as quickly as it started. School officials fixed the window about an hour later.