Deer beheading roils Catalina

State wildlife officials on Friday said they were investigating the beheading of a deer, allegedly by an Avalon city employee who dressed the carcass and then left the head dangling in a soccer net near a preschool and City Hall.

“We are investigating this case to the fullest,” said California Department of Fish and Game Lt. Kent Smirl. “We’re hoping to file with the Los Angeles County district attorney next week.”

Smirl said charges could include illegal taking of a game animal and animal cruelty. “You can use a bullet or an arrow to take a deer,” Smirl said, “but you cannot use a knife.”

City maintenance supervisor Leonard Lopez, identified by law enforcement authorities as a suspect, has been allowed to remain on the job pending the results of the investigation. Lopez was unavailable for comment Friday.

The incident has unleashed a contentious debate in this otherwise close-knit harbor community of about 3,500 permanent residents about 22 miles off the mainland. Some residents are outraged.

“This is supposed to be a friendly island,” said Avalon resident Cheryl Castillo. “You can’t just go around cutting deer’s heads off. We don’t want people to think we’re barbarians.”

Dianne Stone, co-owner of the Coney Island West fast-food restaurant in Avalon, agreed. “It’s heart rending to see these deer coming into town all skin and bones and starving,” she said. “But what happened to that deer was wrong on many levels.”

But even some of the outraged are pointing fingers at state wildlife authorities, saying they failed to manage the island’s exploding population of mule deer, which now number in excess of 3,000. Prolonged drought conditions, combined with the devastation of foraging grounds by recent fires, have forced hundreds of deer to seek sustenance in Avalon. Reports of deer feasting on home gardens, attacking pet dogs and colliding with golf carts have soared in recent weeks.

Avalon Mayor Bob Kennedy, who runs a local scuba equipment business, declined to comment on Lopez. But he had plenty to say about the marauding hordes of deer. “They are property of the state and ought to be better managed,” he said. “In the meantime, deer are being eviscerated on fence posts, tangled up in lawn chairs, attacking pets and eating people’s gardens.”

Mule deer were introduced to the island in the early 1930s with a goal of increasing wildlife and as a hunting resource. Fewer than two decades later, there were 2,000 of them. The Catalina Island Conservancy, which manages the island’s vast wilderness areas, administers annual deer hunts on behalf of state wildlife authorities who set the quotas of animals to be harvested.

This year’s deer hunting season runs from Sept. 4 through Dec. 24. But tempers have flared between resource managers and hunters. In 2000, the conservancy employee in charge of the hunting operation quit after finding his tires had been slashed.

In the past week, conservancy authorities said they have discovered two additional decapitated deer in the interior of the island. It is not believed those cases were related to the one in Avalon.

The current controversy erupted about two weeks ago after local residents out for a morning stroll with their pets reported a doe entangled in a pile of soccer equipment and the soccer net at the city’s Field of Dreams baseball field, only several yards away from City Hall and the Avalon Fire Department. The Fire Department responded by sending law enforcement authorities to the scene to tranquilize the animal. But before they arrived, it had been decapitated.

Avalon resident Jon Council described what he saw in a letter to a local newspaper: “As I got closer I was treated to a view that was quite appalling,” he wrote. “The separated head of the animal hanging in the netting, blood splattered in at least a 5-foot radius in all directions. . . which told me immediately that the deer had thrashed about with a severed neck before dying. . .”

“There is a question of whether there was poor judgment used here in terms of its impact on people,” Avalon City Atty. Pam Albers said Friday. “But it’s also an example of the difficulty we’re all facing with the deer.”

Last Friday night, for example, Jane Bartlett, a bartender at the Cottage Restaurant, watched 11 deer in a single-file line wander onto the beach at Avalon Harbor and then munch on vegetables tossed their way by well-wishers.

But Avalon resident Angela Teckinah had a different take on the animals.

Seated in a golf cart beside a little white dog named Boomer, she said, “A doe with a lot of fauns ran up to little Boomer and tousled him like a rag doll. Boomer couldn’t move for days.”

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louis.sahagun@latimes.com