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Vehicle hits elephant; people and animal OK

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-11-06 07:36

OKLAHOMA CITY: A couple driving along a rural road at night crashed into an elephant that had escaped from a nearby circus.

The couple weren't injured. But the 8-foot (2.4-meter) tall, 4,500-pound (2,040-kilogram) elephant was being examined Thursday for a broken tusk and a leg wound. A local veterinarian said it appeared to have escaped major injury.

Bill Carpenter, 68, said he swerved his sport utility vehicle at the last second and ended up sideswiping the 29-year-old female elephant late Wednesday on a rural highway in Enid, about 80 miles (128 kilometers) north of Oklahoma City.

"Didn't have time to hit the brakes. The elephant blended in with the road," driver Bill Carpenter said Thursday. "At the very last second I said 'elephant!"'

"So help me Hanna, had I hit that elephant, not swerved, it would have knocked it off its legs, and it would have landed right on top of us," he said Thursday. "We'd have been history."

The elephant's tusk punched through the side of the Carpenters' SUV, tearing up sheet metal.

After sideswiping the elephant, his wife, Deena, flagged some people down and used their cell phone to call police.

"The dispatcher didn't believe her: 'You hit a what?"' he said. "I told my wife, I don't know whether to cry or laugh."

Enid veterinarian Dr. Dwight Olson said the elephant was hiding in some bushes just off the highway when he arrived shortly after the accident. Handlers from the circus were able to calm it down, and Olson cleaned the leg wound and gave it some pain killer.

The elephant was taken Thursday to the veterinary school at Oklahoma State University for a follow-up exam.

"I don't believe there's a broken bone, but I don't have an X-ray room big enough to examine it," Olson said.

The elephant had escaped from the Family Fun Circus at the Garfield County Fairgrounds earlier Wednesday after something spooked it while it was being loaded into a truck with another elephant, Olson said.