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HEMPFIELD TOWNSHIP (KDKA) — State police say it was cruel and deliberate.

Someone impaled a cow on a farm in Hempfield Township, and police are looking for who is responsible as well as the getaway driver.

What state police say someone did to one of the cows takes animal cruelty to a new level.

Investigators saw someone, in the pre-dawn hours, got behind the wheel of a tractor, drove around damaging the property, then headed toward the herd. Extending from the front of the tractor are 4-foot steel forks. One animal couldn’t get out of the way in time.

“It appears the animal was impaled and left there to die,” Trooper Stephen Limani said.

The apparent crime was certainly cruel but also costly to the herd’s owner.

“That cow is worth about $1,000,” Limani said.

Troopers say the person driving the tractor was not alone.

“The landowner had heard noise, heard the tractor running and had seen the bailer traveling down the road and a pick up traveling behind it,” Limani said.

Investigators say the pickup driver could also be in very big trouble.

“If you are involved in a crime and are the getaway driver, so to speak, you have the ability to be charged with conspiracy to commit a crime which can carry the same punishment as who committed the crime,” Limani said.

And while it is true that these are beef cattle and all will eventually end up as food, the person who impaled the animal had no right to do so.

“(It’s) absolutely cruel,” Limani said. “To think you would take an animal in the middle of the night and impale it with the forks of a tractor is unthinkable.”

State police say the person responsible almost certainly has experience operating a tractor as well as how to operate the hydraulics.

If you know who’s behind this act, state police want to hear from you.