A66 driver told picking up a dead deer was 'stealing from the council'
A North Yorkshire driver heaved a roadkill deer onto his shoulders on the A66 near Greta Bridge to put it in the freezer – then police said he was stealing from the council. The case was later dropped.
Only in Britain. On 7 June 2026, a driver from near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, spotted a dead deer on the central reservation of the A66 at Greta Bridge, near Barnard Castle, County Durham. He pulled over, heaved the carcass onto his shoulders and planned to take it home for the freezer.
Passing officers stopped him and, he later told the BBC, said he was breaking the law – and that he was “stealing from the council”. They took his details and told him to leave the deer.
Real photo: Greta Bridge, County Durham (Nov 2016) – near the A66 stretch where the deer was found. Photo: Trevor Littlewood / CC BY-SA 2.0 (via Geograph).
Two months later a court summons arrived. He was charged under the Deer Act 1991, which makes it an offence to remove a deer carcass without the landowner’s consent. National Highways, not the council, was eventually clarified as owning the land. At Peterlee Magistrates’ Court he was offered an out-of-court caution that would have left a criminal record; he declined. On 19 October 2026, after a review, Durham Police withdrew the case, saying he had a “genuinely-held belief” he was allowed to remove the animal.
AI illustration – imagined A66 moment; not the actual driver or deer.
AI illustration – imagined punchline. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)
Roadkill for tea. Five months of paperwork. Case dropped. The freezer never got its deer.
Reported by BBC News (31 Oct 2026) and The Northern Echo.
