A Utah man ended up in the hospital after stopping on the side of the road to help a stranger who had two cows and a stray bull in his yard.
Good Samaritan Mark Sargent, 44, from Newcastle, had been trying to help the man herd the animals back into a paddock until their owner could come and collect them.
The couple initially managed to herd two cows off the property, but it was when Sargent used his pickup truck to try to push a bull toward a gate at the end of a driveway that trouble began.
Sargent, who has experience working with cattle and was a former bull rider, abandoned the protection of his truck and tried to herd the bull out the front gate himself.
Mark Sargent of Newcastle, Utah, had been trying to help another man herd two cows and a bull into a corral until its owner could come pick it up when the animal suddenly lunged at him.
Sargent used his pickup truck to try to push a bull into a gate at the end of the property. That’s when the trouble started. Mark Sargent, right, with his wife Hailey
He managed to get the animal through the gate, but was unprepared for what followed, as the bull suddenly turned and charged at him.
The angry bull threw him about 15 feet into the air and then at least 25 feet down the hill, fracturing his pelvis and hip in the process and also injuring several of his ribs.
Sargent is now in the hospital and will have to undergo a hip replacement after doctors became concerned that his broken bones could shift and sever a major artery.
The family has created a GoFundMe which has so far raised $5,000 that will go toward Sargent’s mounting medical expenses.
“I’ve been around cattle for most of my life, so I stopped and helped. I’m no stranger to being around cattle,” Sargent said. KSL.com.
“It all happened so fast that I couldn’t do anything but protect my head. Basically, what was going through my mind was to protect my head because if he had hit me directly in the head, he would have killed me. So most of the blow was on my hip and side,” he explained.
Sargent says he’s not sure how the cattle got onto the property in the first place or why its owner wouldn’t help retrieve it.
He felt that since he was passing away, the family man, who is the father of a teenage daughter, might as well help.
Sargent used to be a bull rider and felt he could handle the situation.
Mark Sargent seen with his wife Hailey Sargent and their daughter in one of his Facebook photos
Sargent was quick to point out that he was not gored by the bull as the animal had no horns (file photo)
“I’m just upset because it’s obviously not a very friendly animal and there are little kids running around. If that had happened to one of those kids, I would have killed it.”
The bull’s owner was eventually located and removed from the area.
The Iron County sheriff confirmed that one man had been “gored by a bull” while two other men had also been involved in a fight, but details were sparse.
While waiting for an ambulance to arrive, Sargent said he saw the property owner and the cattle owner physically fighting.
He said he was not interested in the reason for the fight or how it was resolved as he was concerned about his “very painful” injuries.
“I was trying to get up and get to the truck and get as comfortable as possible, which didn’t happen,” he said.
But Sargent was quick to point out that he was not gored by the bull, as the animal had no horns.
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