Police pop Pinellas Park porker

It's not the kind of call police get too often. But about 5 p.m. Sunday a motorist reported that a wild boar was running down busy Park Boulevard near 49th Street.

When officers responded the boar ran in front of a patrol car and into a neighborhood. Several officers chased it into a backyard, where one tried to use his Taser on it, but it did not slow the animal. Instead, it turned and charged another officer, knocking him down.

It then ran into Pine Villas, a small apartment complex across from Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

Margie Smith, who lives in the complex, couldn't believe her eyes when she saw the animal.

"In Pinellas Park? I been living here eight years and I never had heard of such a thing. I didn't even know we had pigs out here," Smith said.

Police called the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for help. But the police and SPCA officials were unable to lure it into a crate.

"The best interest of the animal would be to preserve the animal and take it alive, but as SPCA officers and other officers tried to corral it into a crate it became very aggressive," said Pinellas Park police officer Doug Weaver. "It ran into a chain-link fence and pushed it about 2 feet, charged at officers, then charged at a woman standing behind the fence."

Weaver said the pig, which weighed about 200 pounds, then broke through a blockade they made with their patrol cars and headed toward Sacred Heart, which at the time had a large crowd attending its fall festival.

"I made the decision that if it got into a crowded area it would be a danger to the public. So I made the decision to go ahead and shoot the animal," Weaver said.

He shot it six times, but the boar turned and charged him, so he fired six more shots before the animal stopped.

Longtime trapper Vernon Yates, owner of Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in Seminole, said he receives about a dozen calls a year about nuisance pigs. He doesn't believe, however, they are the feral pigs that populate wooded areas in rural Florida.

"Pinellas County's wild hog population, pretty much from midcounty south, was wiped out years ago. You might get a few stragglers up in the Eastlake Woodlands area, but the loose ones are primarily someone's pet," he said.