Cops in North Carolina thought it was odd enough a Jacksonville man was driving an ambulance reported stolen hours earlier.
Odder still was that he was wearing a makeshift doctor's uniform consisting of a stethoscope, a pager-like gadget and latex gloves stuffed in his back pocket.
But then things started getting really strange when they saw a dead deer, fully stretched out and wedged in the back. Some said there was an intravenous line attached to the animal and there was evidence a defibrillator had been used.
Officers were just stunned.
"I don't know how the man got it up in there," said Sgt. Robert Pearson of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. "It was a six-point buck."
Leon Hollimon Jr., 37, last seen in August at a River Region Human Services facility in Jacksonville, was sporting a Mohawk haircut and wearing a red shirt when he was chased down in the stolen ambulance Sunday in Rockingham County, N.C.
"He basically said he was told to leave the state," said Rockingham County Sheriff's Office spokesman Dean Venable. "And so he found a way to accomplish that."
Hollimon was admitted to the John Umstead Hospital, a North Carolina hospital that treats psychiatric disorders, for an evaluation, authorities said. Police will decide after that if Hollimon will be charged with any crimes.
The ambulance was stolen before 7 a.m. Sunday from a Davidson County emergency medical service south of Rockingham County. It was sporadically chased as it traveled through three rural North Carolina counties and one in southern Virginia. Eventually, its tires were punctured and it wound up in a ditch late in the morning.
At one point authorities chased it through a field.
"It was a little like the Duke boys out there, I understand," said Pearson.
Hollimon was reported missing from River Region on Aug. 16, a day after he was seen going out a back door, according to a missing persons report filed with Jacksonville police.
Authorities in North Carolina said they did not know where the deer found in the ambulance had been collected but said it had been dead for a time.
"I smelled that deer until 10 o'clock that night," Pearson said.
