Sheriff's deputies shot nearly 50 wild animals - including 18 rare Bengal tigers and 17 lions - in a big-game hunt across the state's countryside on Wednesday after the owner of an exotic-animal park threw their cages open and committed suicide in what may have been one last act of spite against his neighbors and police.
As homeowners nervously hid indoors, officers armed with high-powered rifles and shoot-to-kill orders fanned out through fields and woods to hunt down 56 animals that had been turned loose from the Muskingum County Animal Farm by owner Terry Thompson before he shot himself to death on Tuesday.
After an all-night hunt that extended into Wednesday afternoon, 48 animals were killed. Six others - three leopards, a grizzly bear and two monkeys - were captured and taken to the Columbus Zoo. A wolf was later found dead, leaving a monkey as the only animal still on the loose.
Tragic: Sheriff's deputies shot nearly 50 wild animals - including 18 rare Bengal tigers and 17 lions - across the state's countryside on Wednesday
Dead: Owner of the animals Terry Thompson was found dead by police at the Muskingum County Animal Farm in Zanesville, but cause of death has not been determined
Stench of death: Numerous carcasses lie on the ground at the barn of Muskingum County Animal Farm after dozens of exotic beasts were freed last night
Temporary graveyard: The bodies of various dead animals were seen on Terry Thompson's property in Zanesville, Ohio on Wednesday
Dead: Authorities are still trying to capture or kill the exotic animals that escaped and have accounted for around 43 of them
Carcass: The body of a lion, thought to have been shot dead by police, lies in the undergrowth close to the reserve
Those destroyed included six black bears, two grizzlies, a wolf, a baboon and three mountain lions. Dead animals were being buried on Thompson's farm, officials said.
TV personality and former director of the Columbus Zoo Jack Hanna lamented: 'It's like Noah's Ark wrecking right here in Zanesville, Ohio.'
OHIO LAW ON POSSESSION OF EXOTIC ANIMALS
The law on the possession of exotic animals in Ohio expired in April of this year. It said:
'No person may bring into the state a non-domestic animal unless the possessor: obtains an entry permit; health certificate certifying the animal is free of infectious diseases; and a certificate of veterinary inspection. Persons in the state possessing non-domestic animals do not need to obtain a permit.'
The Humane Society of United States urged Ohio officials to issue an emergency rule to crack down on exotic animal ownership after yesterday's incident.
The organisation said that if the previous emergency order issued by then-Governor Ted Strickland had not expired, then Thompson 'would almost certainly have had his animals removed by May 1, 2011.'
Ohio has some of the nation's weakest restrictions on exotic pets and among the highest number of injuries and deaths caused by them.
Mr Hanna defended the sheriff's decision to kill the animals but said the deaths of the Bengal tigers were especially tragic. There are only about 1,400 of the endangered cats left in the world, he said.
'When I heard 18, I was still in disbelief,' he said. 'The most magnificent creature in the entire world, the tiger is.'
As the hunt dragged on outside of Zanesville, population 25,000, schools closed in the mostly rural area of farms and widely spaced homes 55 miles east of Columbus. Parents were warned to keep children and pets indoors. And flashing signs along highways told motorists, 'Caution exotic animals' and 'Stay in vehicle.'
Officers were ordered to kill the animals instead of trying to bring them down with tranquillizers for fear that those hit with darts would escape in the darkness before they dropped and would later regain consciousness.
'These animals were on the move, they were showing aggressive behaviour,' Sheriff Matt Lutz said. 'Once the nightfall hit, our biggest concern was having these animals roaming.'
The sheriff would not speculate why Thompson killed himself and why he left open the cages and fences at his 73-acre preserve, dooming the animals he seemed to love so much.
Mr Thompson, 62, had had repeated run-ins with the law and his neighbours. Lutz said that the sheriff's office had received numerous complaints since 2004 about animals escaping onto neighbours' property. The sheriff's office also said that Thompson had been charged over the years with animal cruelty, animal neglect and allowing animals to roam.
He had gotten out of federal prison just last month after serving a year for possessing unregistered guns.
John Ellenberger, a neighbor, speculated that Thompson freed the animals to get back at neighbors and police. 'Nobody much cared for him,' Mr Ellenberger said.
Today: Terry Thompson's property, where dozens of large exotic animals including tigers, lions and bears were hunted down and shot after their owner opened their cages at his Ohio farm
Warning: A sign posted on Interstate 70 warns drivers of animals loose in the area around Zanesville, Ohio, until all are accounted for
Angie McElfresh, who lives in an apartment near the farm and hunkered down with her family in fear, said 'it could have been an "f-you" to everybody around him.'
Thompson had rescued some of the animals at his preserve and purchased many others, said Columbus Zoo spokeswoman Patty Peters.
It was not immediately clear how Mr Thompson managed to support the preserve and for what purpose it was operated, since it was not open to the public. But Thompson had appeared on the Rachael Ray Show in 2008 as an animal handler for a zoologist guest, said show spokeswoman Lauren Nowell.
Larry Hostetler, the executive director of the Animal Shelter Society of Muskingum County, told CNN Thompson had also once supplied a lion cub for a photo shoot with supermodel Heidi Klum.
'I wrote a letter to Heidi Klum's people. I strongly voiced my opinion that if they're going to hire animals for entertainment, they might want to check handlers' backgrounds - that Terry Thompson had been convicted of animal cruelty. Of course, I never heard anything back,' he said.
The sheriff's office started getting calls on Tuesday evening that wild animals were loose just west of Zanesville. Deputies went to the animal preserve and found Thompson dead and all the cages open. Several aggressive animals were near his body and had to be shot, the sheriff said.
Sheriff's Deputy Jonathan Merry was among the first to respond on Tuesday. He said he shot a number of animals, including a gray wolf and a black bear. He said the bear charged him and he fired his pistol, killing it with one shot when it was about seven feet away.
Grizzly: A bear is pictured on the loose shortly after its escape
Hunt: Authorities are still scouring the area for any of the 'aggressive' animals who remain at large
Search: At least 35 of the 48 wild animals are believed to have been accounted for
'All these animals have the ability to take a human out in the length of a second,' said Merry, who called himself an animal lover but said he knew he was protecting the community.
'What a tragedy,' said Barb Wolfe, a veterinarian with The Wilds, a nearby zoo-sponsored wild animal preserve. She said she managed to hit a tiger with a tranquilizer dart, but the animal charged toward her and then turned and began to flee before the drug could take effect, and deputies shot the big cat.
At an afternoon news conference, the sheriff said that the danger had passed and that people could move around freely again, but that the monkey would probably be shot because it was believed to be carrying a herpes disease.
'It was like a war zone with all the shooting and so forth with the animals,' said Sam Kopchak, who was outside on Tuesday afternoon when he saw Mr Thompson's horses acting up. Kopchak said he turned and saw a male lion lying down on the other side of a fence.
'The fence is not going to be a fence that's going to hold an African lion,' Mr Kopchak said.
Danielle Berkheimer said she was nervous as she drove home on Tuesday night and afraid to let her two dogs out in the yard.
'When it's 300-pound cats, that's scary,' she said. She said it had been odd on Tuesday night to see no one out around town, and the signs warning drivers to stay in their cars were 'surreal'.
Some townspeople were saddened by the deaths. At a nearby Moose Lodge, Bill Weiser said: 'It's breaking my heart, them shooting those animals.'
Ohio has some of the nation's weakest restrictions on exotic pets and among the highest number of injuries and deaths caused by them. At least nine people have been injured since 2005 and one person was killed, according to Born Free USA, an animal advocacy group.
Authorities: Sheriff Lutz said there are not ruling out any possibility at the moment that Thompson killed himself, or was killed at the hands of another man or the animals
Locator: Map showing where the farm the animals escaped from is located
Hunt: Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz speaks to the media after dozens of exotic animals escaped an enclosure in Zanesville, Ohio
The state requires permits for bears but doesn't regulate the ownership of animals like lions and tigers.
Last summer, an animal caretaker was killed by a bear at a property in Cleveland. The caretaker had opened the bear's cage on keeper Sam Mazzola's property for a routine feeding.
Although animal rights activists had wanted the keeper Mazzola charged with reckless homicide, the caretaker's death was ruled a workplace accident. The bear was later destroyed.
This summer, Mazzola was found dead on a water bed at his home in Columbia Township, 15 miles south-west of Cleveland. He was wearing a mask and with his arms and legs had been restrained when he was discovered,
It was never revealed how many animals were on the property when Mazzola died, but he had said in a bankruptcy filing in May 2010 that he owned four tigers, a lion, eight bears and 12 wolves.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture had revoked his licence to exhibit animals after activists campaigned against him letting people wrestle with one bear.
Mazzola had permits for nine bears last year, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
On Wednesday, the Humane Society of the United States criticized Governor John Kasich for allowing a statewide ban on the buying and selling of exotic pets to expire in April. The organisation urged the state to immediately issue emergency restrictions.
'How many incidents must we catalog before the state takes action to crack down on private ownership of dangerous exotic animals?' Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO, asked in a statement.
Mr Kasich said on Wednesday during a meeting of Dix Communications editors: 'Clearly, we need tougher laws. We haven't had them in this state. Nobody's dealt with this, and we will. And we'll deal with it in a comprehensive way.'
Barney Long, an expert at the World Wildlife Fund, noted that tigers in general are endangered. He said there appear to be fewer of them living in the wild than there are in captivity in the U.S. alone. Over the last century, the worldwide population has plunged from about 100,000 in the wild to as few as 3,200, he said.
More than half are Bengal tigers, which live in isolated pockets across Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, India and Bangladesh, he said in a telephone interview.
'The tragic shooting of 18 tigers in Ohio really highlights what is happening on a daily basis to tigers in the wild throughout Asia,' Mr Long added in an email. 'Their numbers are being decimated by poaching and habitat loss, and that is the real travesty here.'
by dailymail.co.uk
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