Vermont Standard
8/6/15
By Eric Francis
Standard Correspondent
KILLINGTON — A report from startled motorists Friday night that a Scottish Highlander bull had slipped out of his pasture and was wandering along Route 4 south of the Killington Skyeship gondolas parking lot already had a state trooper rushing to the area when tragedy struck and a Connecticut couple slammed into the massive animal, killing both the bull and the driver of the car instantly.
Jon Bellis, 62, a Yale trained psychiatrist from Woodbridge, Connecticut, was pronounced dead at the scene while his wife of 37-years, Kathryn Barry Bellis, 60, sustained only a wrist injury after their crushed Subaru Crosstrek continued to roll westward down a grassy slope before coming to rest against a tree just past the Val Roc motel.
Standard Correspondent
KILLINGTON — A report from startled motorists Friday night that a Scottish Highlander bull had slipped out of his pasture and was wandering along Route 4 south of the Killington Skyeship gondolas parking lot already had a state trooper rushing to the area when tragedy struck and a Connecticut couple slammed into the massive animal, killing both the bull and the driver of the car instantly.
Jon Bellis, 62, a Yale trained psychiatrist from Woodbridge, Connecticut, was pronounced dead at the scene while his wife of 37-years, Kathryn Barry Bellis, 60, sustained only a wrist injury after their crushed Subaru Crosstrek continued to roll westward down a grassy slope before coming to rest against a tree just past the Val Roc motel.
The couple has long had a second home in Killington.
The curly haired bull named “Rob” had, along with his companion “Big,” served for the past seven years as a mascot for Mosher Excavating, even making it through Hurricane Irene when the pasture at Mosher’s farm had washed away down the Ottauquechee River.
Killington Police Chief Whit Montgomery responded to the fatal crash along with the Killington Volunteer Fire Department and a Rutland RegionalAmbulance. Montgomery said one of the first people to stop “almost immediately” after the crash and render aid to the Bellis’ was a passing doctor but there was nothing that could be done for Jon Bellis.
Montgomery said his understanding was that there may have been “a couple of times” in the past when animals had gotten loose from their enclosures at Mosher “but nothing to this extent.”
Determining just how Rob got out will be part of the on-going state police investigation into the crash which is “looking at all angles,” Chief Montgomery said late Tuesday evening.
The chief said the “one piece of good positive news out of an otherwise tragic situation” was the successful recovery of the couple’s four-year-old golden retriever “Leo” who’d gotten out of the wreckage of the Bellis’ car on Friday night and disappeared until he was finally found four days later by the Bellis’ children just before noon on Tuesday not far from the crash scene.
“He was found OK…dirty but OK,” Chief Montgomery said, “He was taken to a vet to be checked out and is now back with his family.”
Several family friends and volunteers from the community had been out putting up posters of Leo and searching around the area after possible sightings were reported near the gas station and the Back Behind Restaurant over the weekend.
On Facebook, Chris Bellis of Philadelphia wrote that he and his wife had joined his sister, Erin Bellis, who’d driven up Monday night, in searching for Leo and he posted a video showing the moment when Leo ran down a side road with muddy paws towards his camera.
“We found him. He responded to my sister’s voice and came running,” Chris Bellis wrote.
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