A hunter is accused of shooting a deer at a Walmart parking lot last fall, and now the Pennsylvania Game Commission is charging the man for the killing.
The hunter, 40-year-old Arcangelo Bianco Jr., was at the Walmart parking lot in November when he spotted a trophy 10-point buck standing across the road. Bianco, while still standing in the store’s parking lot, allegedly fired at the deer with a handgun.
Wildlife Conservation Officer Jack Lucas said it took the hunter several shots to bag the deer as he stood in the Walmart parking lot. Bianco then retrieved the deer from the side of the highway across from the store.
It may have been a strange incident, but Lucas said it yielded one of the best bucks he’s seen taken from the area — in Pennsylvania about 30 miles from Pittsburgh — in recent years.
Bianco was able to bag the deer, but is not being charged with reckless endangerment for shooting the deer at Walmart. He was also charged with hunting without a license, shooting on or across highways, and unlawful killing or taking of big game.
Bianco avoided a charge for hunting out of season — he shot the deer in the afternoon hours of November 26, just minutes before the hunting season for antlered deer was to end.
“Obviously, we can’t have someone running through a Walmart parking lot shooting at a deer,” Lucas said.
Bianco said he was at the Burrell Township shopping plaza to do some banking when he spotted the deer running through the parking lot. When it ran across the corner of a store the hunter jumped from his truck and began firing.
“The defendant pursued the deer through the parking lot and across Old William Penn Highway, where he killed the deer. The defendant then loaded the deer into his vehicle and took it to a meat processor for butchering,” Lucas wrote in the arresting documents.
Lucas said police found surveillance footage of the Walmart parking lot shooting.
The hunter who shot the deer at Walmart faces a preliminary hearing on May 1. His attorney did not return a reporter’s call seeking a comment on the case.
