Report: Ohio animal owner upset over house arrest

JoANNE VIVIANO

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS (AP) — A recently released fed­eral prison inmate who freed dozens of exotic pets includ­ing lions and tigers from his east­ern Ohio farm and then killed him­self had been dis­traught over a plan to place him on house arrest, a pro­ba­tion offi­cer told deputies in records released this week.

The records also show that deputies respond­ing to Terry Thompson’s prop­erty the day he died believed they had con­fined sev­eral lions to their cages by clos­ing doors that had been pushed open, only to find the ani­mals were escap­ing through holes made by bolt cutters.

Offi­cers resorted to shoot­ing all the lions, among 48 of Thompson’s 56 ani­mals that were killed over two days in Octo­ber out of con­cern for pub­lic safety as they spread across the farm and the com­mu­nity out­side Zanesville.

The doc­u­ments, first reported Tues­day by the Zanesville Times Recorder, are described by the Musk­ingum County Sheriff’s Office as the final, full report into the inci­dent, and they include pre­vi­ously released nar­ra­tives from deputies and addi­tional inves­tiga­tive reports.

One detec­tive reported he inter­viewed fed­eral pro­ba­tion offi­cer Joe Moore, who had vis­ited the farm five days before Thompson’s sui­cide and had recently spo­ken by tele­phone with the 62-year-old Thomp­son, who had been home only a few weeks after spend­ing a year in prison on a gun con­vic­tion and was to be hooked up to an elec­tronic mon­i­tor­ing device.

“Moore described Thomp­son as being ‘dis­traught’ over being con­fined to his res­i­dence,” the report says, adding that he also was strug­gling with other issues.

The detec­tive wrote: “Thomp­son was ‘over­whelmed’ with the (farm’s) con­di­tion since he had returned home from prison. … Thomp­son had con­firmed he and (wife) Mar­ian were ‘hav­ing problems.’”

In another report, a deputy says he and other offi­cers had attempted to save some of the ani­mals by clos­ing heavy wooden doors with latch locks that con­fined large lions.

“At that point we thought we had neu­tral­ized any threat from those ani­mals, but as we moved to the last door and locked it we saw that all the cages had been cut open using bolt cut­ters,” the deputy says. “The chain link fence had been cut to where ani­mals could go through. At that point there was no way to secure any of the cages.”

The deputy writes that another offi­cer had tried to close one of the holes when a lion came out from about 3 feet away and was shot dead.

Three leop­ards and a griz­zly bear that remained in secure cages were taken to the Colum­bus Zoo, the reports show. Offi­cials have pre­vi­ously said two pri­mates also were taken to the zoo, where all six ani­mals are being cared for under a state-issued quar­an­tine order being appealed by Mar­ian Thomp­son, who wants the ani­mals returned.

The ani­mals that were killed were buried in a grave at a site she selected.

Reports show Terry Thomp­son was found near a pair of bolt cut­ters and a revolver from which one round had been fired. A white tiger appeared to be eat­ing his body, which had been dragged about 20 feet, the reports say.

The release and killings of the ani­mals focused atten­tion on Ohio’s exotic-pet restric­tions, which are among the weak­est in the nation, and a study com­mit­tee and state agen­cies have out­lined a frame­work for pos­si­ble new rules.

A group of ani­mal own­ers is object­ing to a rec­om­mended ban on own­er­ship of ven­omous snakes, mon­keys and other dan­ger­ous ani­mals by 2014, argu­ing that fed­er­ally licensed facil­i­ties shouldn’t fall under the prohibition.

Posted by AP News on Jan 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.