Bull found slaughtered in Lee County pasture

Detectives began investigating after a bull was found slaughtered in Lee County.

Lee County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday a bull was found dead in a private pasture on Shawnee Road near the intersection with State Road 82 and Daniels Parkway.

Investigators say someone broke into the pasture and slaughtered the animal for its meat.

Shawnee Rd. has a theme: It’s secluded.

“As you can imagine, everybody on this road, everybody’s got guns; everybody’s got dogs,” Kevin Schermerhorn said. “A lot of times, the cattle comes over, so it’s kind of neat to see, I guess you could say.”

The pasture is a wide-open space right near busy roadways in Lee County.

“They have several horses,” Schermerhorn said. “Down the road here, there’s some more horses too, and everybody for the most part has chickens. Up until this point, I haven’t heard of anything going wrong with the chickens.”

It’s a space for people like Schermerhorn and his wife to keep their horses.

“We have surveillance; plus, we have three dogs that roam the property. One stays out at night, so, primarily, that was to keep coyotes away because we have chickens too,” Schermerhorn said. “But now we kind of look at it as humans, unfortunately.”

Investigators believe someone got onto the property and killed a bull and took its meat.

“Whatever picture she saw, looks like they kind of cut the back end of the bull off or whatever,” Schermerhorn said.

We asked Schermerhorn why he thought someone might do this.

“Who knows? With COVID and everything else, people are obviously going through a tough time, and maybe it’s the only way they can get food in their stomach,” Schermerhorn said.

Horses were reportedly slaughtered in Southwest Florida earlier in 2020, but this is the first time we’ve learned about reports of a bull slaughtered in the region or around the state this year.

The sheriff’s office explained detectives have not made any connection between the Lee County bull and other similar killings of horses.

Schermerhorn hopes, for his horse’s sake, that’s not the case.

“My wife would be devastated,” Schermerhorn said.

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office says anyone with information is asked to call them at 239-477-1000 or call Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers at 800-780-TIPS.