Roadkill takeout an economic fallout?

What better way to follow up that last ooey - gooey post than with this road kill story - a story that comes courtesy of my hometown newspaper, The Hamburg Sun, where I interned as a 16-year-old under Felice Krycia, the woman whose byline is on this article.

As a kid I frequented this China King in Hamburg, NY. My best friend's mother ordered takeout from them on what seemed like a weekly basis.

As a pseudo-vegetarian, the story makes me cringe. As a reporter from Western New York, it pleases me to share with you a roadkill headline.

Dead deer are a dime a dozen in Western New York.

Once, when the rival basketball team from Eden, NY wanted to piss off our basketball team, they stuck a severed deer head on the cheerleader bus. Whenever a high school boy shot a buck in the woods, the faculty gnawed on venison for weeks.

Our neighbors at the end of Thiel Road liked to bleed their deer from the front porch of their two-story home.

You get the picture.

On that note, bon appetit!
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(Story courtesy of The Hamburg Sun.)

China King restaurant shut down after dead deer found in kitchen
By FELICE E. KRYCIA

It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but butchering a dead deer on the floor of a restaurant kitchen is just something you don’t do.

According to Town of Hamburg Police, they received a call about 9 a.m last Friday (Oct. 24) that a dead deer was being dragged in through the front door of the China King restaurant, located in the Big Lots Plaza at 5999 South Park Ave. in Hamburg.

When Officer Joseph Kleinfelder arrived at the scene, he located drag and blood marks from the woods on the south side of China King to the front door.

He then followed them into the restaurant through the dining room and into the kitchen, where the suspect, Tin Chun Cheung, was attempting to remove the head of a female deer on the floor between the sink and the center food prep table of the restaurant.

The deer’s legs had already been removed from the body and placed in the kitchen sink, Hamburg Police Captain A. Daniel Shea said.

“Officer Kleinfelder followed the trail right into the kitchen and saw the man bent over the deer trying to cut through its neck,” said Shea.

According to police, Cheung said he had found the deer dead in the parking lot and was going to take this meat home for his family. He went on to say he had no intention of leaving the meat in the restaurant.

The Erie County Health Department and the state Environment and Conservation Department were called in and along with the violation of a dead animal in the business, they found the walk-in-cooler was too warm and all the food inside it needed to be removed and destroyed.

Cheung was also charged with unlawful possession of wildlife, a violation of the NYS ENCON law. The Health Department then ordered the business to be shut down until all the evidence on this incident had been presented and a determination made by Erie County Commissioner of Health Dr. Anthony J. Billittier IV.

The determination was expected to be handed down Wednesday (Oct. 29), which is after The Sun had already gone to press.

This ruling will outline what Cheung must repair and do to the building before the Health Department will allow it to reopen.

“They will have to repair or replace the walk-in-cooler and have the entire building sanitized,” said Erie County Health Department Public Information Officer Kevin Montgomery. “Once all the issues are addressed, inspectors will be sent to check all aspects of the restaurant and then a determination will be made on if they may reopen.”

The deer, which had been struck by a vehicle earlier that day had reportedly fled into the woods, was disposed of under the direction of the county’s Health Department.

For a video of this story, click here.
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PS. Happy birthday to Ro, my beloved best friend, who enjoys stories like this more than I do. I would be a sorry, humorless sack without you.