Police Kill Dozens of Animals Freed on Ohio Reserve
ZANESVILLE, Ohio — The woman’s voice sounded a little annoyed. “There’s a bear and a lion out,” she told the 911 operator. “Right up behind us.”
Come again, the operator said. “Yeah,” the caller replied. “They’re chasing Terry’s horses.”
Both the woman and the operator seemed surprisingly calm considering that, in the end, it was not merely a bear and a lion but 56 exotic creatures — a fierce menagerie that included wolves,longchamp outlet monkeys and 18 Bengal tigers, an endangered species whose numbers total less than 3,000 in the wild — that had fled their cages on a 73-acre private reserve. Friends described the couple who ran it as animals lovers, but they also had a history of run-ins with the law.
By late Wednesday, the authorities in this central Ohio city of 25,000 said they had killed or captured all but one of the animals. They had escaped from captivity on the reserve, a few miles west of downtown Zanesville, after one of the owners apparently cut open their wire cages or opened the doors and then fatally shot himself.
The animals’ release set off a day of tense watches, frantic searches and a news media tumult in the rain-soaked hills along Interstate 70, an hour’s drive east of Columbus.
Terry Thompson, 62, who officials said let out the animals, had assembled the exotic collection with his wife, creature by creature, largely out of their love of wild animals, friends said. But there had been trouble in their lives: Mr. Thompson was released from a federal prison three weeks ago after a serving yearlong sentence for possessing illegal firearms, and friends said he and his wife were estranged.
Still, it remained unclear Wednesday exactly why he released the animals and took his own life.
The creatures were eventually hunted down and killed by Muskingum County sheriff’s deputies and other law enforcement officials — at first with but handguns, and later with assault rifles — as the animals wandered the property or ventured out of nearby woods.
At least 49 of the creatures had been killed by Wednesday afternoon, most of them within 500 yards of their pens, including 17 lions and at least one animal described only as one of the big cats that was hit by a car as it tried to cross a street. It was later shot.
Six other animals — three leopards, a grizzly bear and two monkeys — were shot with tranquilizer darts and sent to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, where they were placed under quarantine. And various species of monkeys, found alive in cages inside the Thompson house, were also spared.
A lone monkey, the final escapee, remained on the loose.
Mr. Thompson’s wife, Marian, arrived at the property on Wednesday and pleaded with officials not to kill her animals.
Jack Hannah, the director emeritus of the Columbus zoo and a regular guest on national talk shows, was helping the authorities at the scene and said that Ms. Thompson had begged them, “Please don’t take my babies,” as they tracked down the wild creatures.
Animal rights advocates have criticized the Muskingum County Sheriff’s Department for killing so many of the exotic animals, but Sheriff Matt Lutz took pains on Wednesday to illustrate the danger of employing nonlethal force in such circumstances.
He said a veterinarian had tried to shoot a fleeing Bengal tiger with a tranquilizer dart, but that it either missed or only enraged the 300-pound animal. “It just went crazy,” Sheriff Lutz said. “We had to put it down.”
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