A man accused of poaching deer on private property in Port Vue led police on an ATV chase through the borough before officers tased him twice to get him under control, police say. Joshua Jay Keim, who goes by the nickname Banana Bob, was booked into the Allegheny County Jail following the encounter.
According to WTAE, officials say Keim was found poaching on private property in Port Vue last month. When an officer spotted Keim on his ATV and activated emergency lights near McClure Drive, the officer repeatedly ordered him to stop, the outlet reports. Keim did not comply, and the officer warned him he would be tased if he kept going.
Chase Forced Other Drivers Off the Road
Keim is accused of forcing other vehicles off the roadway as he maneuvered around them while fleeing, per the station's report. The officer pursued him through multiple streets before Keim finally stopped on Beverly Road and got off the ATV as ordered. Despite stopping the vehicle, police say he then resisted arrest, and officers struck him with one taser dart before tasing him a second time to get him into the back of a cruiser.
A criminal complaint cited in the same account states that Keim did not stop the ATV despite repeated orders from the officer. WTAE also reports that Keim allegedly told authorities he had been hunting, though the account indicates he did not have a Pennsylvania state hunting license. His poaching equipment was turned over to wildlife authorities, the outlet notes.
Charges Filed After the Arrest
Keim faces charges of resisting arrest, reckless driving, fleeing or attempting to elude police, and agricultural trespasser, according to the same report. Pennsylvania's criminal code classifies resisting arrest as a second-degree misdemeanor when a person intends to prevent a lawful arrest and either creates a substantial risk of bodily injury or forces officers to use substantial force to overcome the resistance, per Pennsylvania General Assembly statute. Separately, the state's trespass law covers knowingly entering or remaining on posted or fenced agricultural or other open land. Defiant trespass is a third-degree misdemeanor when the offender defies an order to leave personally communicated by the owner or an authorized person; otherwise, it is a summary offense, under Pennsylvania General Assembly code. Those statutes describe the general legal framework and do not establish which elements prosecutors allege were met in Keim's case.
Poaching Was Pennsylvania's Most-Prosecuted Wildlife Violation in 2019
Cases like this one aren't isolated. State game wardens prosecuted 1,154 incidents of unlawful taking of game or wildlife in 2019 alone, making it the top wildlife violation that year, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission's annual report as covered by pennlive.com. Hunting without a required license was the second-most-prosecuted violation that year, with 484 cases. Game wardens initiated 6,824 prosecutions total in 2019, winning 5,895 of them, and issued 9,543 warnings, while the commission's Operation Game Thief tip line fielded 1,493 calls from the public.
A more severe Pennsylvania poaching case resolved last year offers a stark comparison. Three Somerset County men were sentenced for illegally killing 19 white-tailed deer over a two-month span in 2020, pennlive.com reported, with officials believing the trio may have killed as many as 31 animals and left most of the carcasses to rot. The men had hunted at night using a spotlight and shooting from a vehicle, the Game Commission said. One of them, 26-year-old Caleb Roland of Somerset, pleaded guilty to three summary counts of unlawfully killing or taking big game, was ordered to pay $3,000 in fines plus $5,000 in replacement costs, and lost his hunting and trapping privileges for 30 years.
