They went out to investigate, and when they opened the dumpster were shocked to find a woman inside gathering deer parts, said Greg Graham, Pennsylvania Game Commission wildlife conservation officer.
After a six-month investigation, Shi Eng, 54, of Lititz, was issued 16 citations for illegally buying or selling game, and her husband, Chun Eng, 66, received one citation for the same offense.
The investigation began in December 2015 after the Pa. Game Commission was contacted by New York officials who accused Shi Eng of selling deer parts out of her vehicle in Chinatown in New York City.
The couple was known to two deer processors in Lancaster county, Graham said.
The day before the 2015 incident at the Elizabethtown deer processor, Shi Eng was at the business asking for deer parts for her dog. "They said 'go ahead, help yourself,' " Graham said.
The next day, she was back, Graham said. "It was Mrs. Eng inside the dumpster – dumpster diving, so to speak," Graham said.
The Engs were also accused in three other incidents between 2013 and 2015 at a New Holland deer processor, Graham said.
In 2013, the woman came to the shop asking for bones for her dog, and the owner picked out a few to give her. "The next day she was helping herself," he said, out of the dumpster behind the shop.
"The manager asked 'How many dogs do you have?' and the answer was 'Many dogs'," Graham said. He said the manager told her to take what she had, but to stay out of the dumpster.
In 2014, workers found her back at the dumpster again, Graham said. "She offered to pay for parts," he said, but the employees said they can't sell them, and they told her to leave.
In another instance in 2015, a neighbor saw Chun Eng at the dumpster, Graham said.
After learning of the New York charges, Graham said he went to New China House restaurant in Lititz Dec. 16, and said he found 300 to 400 pounds of deer parts - Deer brains, heads, parts.
"It was primarily legs, heads, rib cages, spinal columns, a bowl of deer brains," Graham said.
An hour later, he Department of Agriculture was at the restaurant, and shut it down after finding numerous violations.
They were up and running a few days later, Graham said. The business was later sold, and is now open under new owners, he said.
The Engs "never admitted to anything," Graham said. He said Shi Eng did plead guilty to some of the charges in New York, which were primarily unlawful possession and importation of deer from a state where there is chronic wasting disease in deer.
A woman who worked at the restaurant told officials she had asked the Engs what the deer legs in the freezer were for. "She said it makes the soup taste better," Graham said the woman was told.
Last December, Chun Eng told PennLive "We don't sell deer meat."
"They took the deer bones – we need for soup for my wife, and for me," he said, adding that they don't sell it to the public. He said they got the deer heads and bones from a deer butchering house in Elizabethtown.
Graham said he's skeptical that deer parts never made their way into food in the restaurant.
"I think it's pretty hard to believe that some of those products that they had in the refrigerator and freezer were not ending up somehow, in some way, shape or form, in one of the dishes," he said.
"You got a restaurant, you got a freezer and cooler, and half of what's there are venison parts, I think that goes against claiming this is all for personal use," he said.
The charges against them, filed Friday, are the highest grade of summary infractions allowed under Game Commission statutes, Graham said. Up to 90 days in jail and fines up to $1,500 are possible if found guilty.
Chun Eng pleaded guilty to Department of Agriculture restaurant violations and paid $1,200 in fines.
(PennLive - July 26 2016)
