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Massachusetts probably isn’t the first state to come to mind when you read the word “rodeo,” but one that was held in a town on the Rhode Island border over the weekend managed to make some headlines courtesy of eight bulls who managed to escape from an enclosure in the parking lot of a mall.
Rodeos are largely built on a foundation of controlled chaos, as the primary draw tends to be the massive bulls at the center of various events where riders and wranglers are tasked with attempting to assert their dominance over beasts that can weigh upwards of a ton.
Those animals were front and center at a rodeo that was held at the Emerald Square Mall in North Attleborough, Massachusetts on Sunday, but the attendees who flocked there found themselves dealing with a pretty scary situation courtesy of the pack of bulls that was able to escape from the pens where they were being held and made easy work of the chain link fence that was erected around the gathering.
👀Wild video from North Attleboro shows the moment bulls escaped from a rodeo, taking down a fence in the process. https://t.co/0e1tPonLb8 pic.twitter.com/mUaxrkfLXp
— Boston 25 News (@boston25) September 22, 2024
According to WCVB, police and members of the fire department joined forces with the organizers of the rodeo after the incident unfolded shortly after noon, as one of the bulls was promptly cornered and corralled as the rest of the group continued to roam the streets of the town.
Six of them eventually made their way into the backyard of a nearby home before the first responders were able to successfully round them up around four hours after they broke out. No one was injured, although one of the animals is still on the lam as of this writing.
Things obviously did not go according to plan, and authorities say they’re conducting an investigation into the rodeo in an attempt to determine how the escape transpired in the first place.