A hunter in western New York fatally shot 43-year-old Rosemary Billquist after he mistook her for a deer,.
Rosemary was taking her dogs for a walk in her hometown of Sherman near the Pennsylvania border on Wednesday when she was shot by Thomas Jadlowski.
via NYDN:
Jadlowski heard her scream and called 911. He stayed with Billquist until emergency personnel arrived.
Billquist was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital in Pennsylvania.
“They tried saving her,” husband Jamie Billquist told the Buffalo News on Friday. “It was just too bad…. It’s horrific. It will be with me the rest of my life.”
“This is a horrific incident,” Chautauqua County Sheriff Joe Gerace told the newspaper. “….This destroyed two lives.”
The shooting occurred at around 5:30 p.m., about 40 minutes after sunset, when officials say it’s illegal to hunt.
Jamie Billquist was told about the shooting after he heard his dogs barking and saw an ambulance, according to the newspaper. He went with his wife to the hospital.
“She was always out to help somebody,” he told the Buffalo News. “She never wanted credit and was always quiet about it. She’s just an angel. An angel for sure.”
Jadlowski has not been charged, but the investigation is ongoing.
“Hunters have to understand there are other people using trails, using parks in areas where we as sportsmen hunt,” Dale Dunkelberger of the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s hunter education program told the Buffalo News.
“In this case, it appears from what I gathered this was after sunset, and he shouldn’t have been out there hunting after sunset. You’re done. That’s the law.”
How does one mistake a woman for an entire deer though?
