The New York State Police press release has all the ingredients of a routine North Country animal strike: a Saturday evening, a rural U.S. highway, a Jeep heading southwest, and a driver who “was unable to avoid a collision” with something that stepped into the road.
Then it names the animal. It was a water buffalo.
Not a deer. Not a moose. A water buffalo, a domesticated bovine native to South and Southeast Asia, standing on U.S. Highway 11 in the town of Stockholm, in St. Lawrence County, deep in New York’s North Country.
What the troopers say happened
According to the State Police release, dated Oct. 19, troopers were called to U.S. 11 at about 6:50 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 17. Investigators determined that a red 2017 Jeep driven by Kristen L. Rozelle, 50, of Norwood, was traveling southwest when the water buffalo entered the roadway. Rozelle hit it head-on.
Rozelle and her passenger, Lindsey Baker, 27, of Potsdam, were taken to Canton-Potsdam Hospital for evaluation. The animal died at the scene, police told North Country This Week.
The timing matters. By standard astronomical calculations, the sun set in Stockholm at about 6:11 p.m. that day, and civil twilight ended around 6:41 p.m. The crash came roughly 10 minutes later, in the dark, on a rural highway. In an interview with WWNY-TV, Rozelle described what she saw before impact as, essentially, nothing: “All of a sudden, I just see black.”
That lines up with what the animal was. Water buffalo commonly have dark gray to black coats. Baker told the station that what she remembered seeing afterward was that it was black and had horns.
A “personal injury accident” with no injuries
The release contains one more detail worth reading twice. Its first paragraph says troopers responded to “a personal injury accident.” Its last line of narrative says of Rozelle and Baker: “Neither sustained injuries.”
The two women see it differently. Speaking to WWNY days later, Rozelle said she had sprains and bruises across her body and cuts on a leg and a hand. Baker said she had bruises on her legs and chest. The release does not explain how the call could be classified as a personal injury crash while reporting no injuries, and nothing in it suggests anyone was seriously hurt.
The driver’s account
Everything beyond the release comes from the women themselves, and it is their account, not a police finding.
Rozelle told WWNY she was going 52 mph and that a trooper estimated the animal’s weight at about 2,300 pounds. She said she blacked out briefly after the impact, and when she came to, smoke from the deployed airbags made her think the Jeep was burning. The airbags were in the way of the door handles.
Baker said she checked whether Rozelle was still belted in, got out, and went into the road to wave down passing traffic. Drivers stopped and stayed with them until first responders arrived. Rozelle credited both the strangers and the Jeep, which she described as a Limited trim. “If I did not have a Jeep Limited, I’d be dead,” she told the station.
As for how the animal got there, Rozelle said an eyewitness told her he watched it run across a field and jump the guardrail toward her Jeep. That claim comes secondhand, and the State Police release does not address it. Officially, the water buffalo simply “entered the roadway.”
Whose water buffalo?
Water buffalo are not wildlife in New York. They are livestock, raised in North America mostly for milk and meat, and someone owned this one. The State Police release does not say who. WWNY reported that troopers said the owner, who lives in the area, was at the scene and spoke with a trooper, but they declined to name him.
The release mentions no tickets or charges against anyone. Rozelle told WWNY that, as of her interview, no one had reached out to her and Baker.
That leaves the official record of the night at three short paragraphs: a time, a highway, a red Jeep, and an animal that most drivers on U.S. 11 would never think to watch for. The release does not say how a domesticated Asian bovine came to be standing on a northern New York highway after dark. It does note, accurately, that the driver was unable to avoid it.
What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever had to brake for on a rural road?
Sources: New York State Police, Troop B press release (Oct. 19, 2026); WWNY-TV report (Oct. 19); interviews with Kristen Rozelle and Lindsey Baker as reported by WWNY-TV via Gray News; North Country This Week. Sunset and twilight times calculated for Stockholm, N.Y., on Oct. 17, 2026.
Image credits: Lead image, water buffalo bull by Alexander Vasenin / Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0; the animal pictured is not the one involved in the crash. U.S. 11 signs in Potsdam by Doug Kerr / Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0.