On Oct. 19, 54 animals were let out of the Muskingum County Animal Park by their owner, who then committed suicide. There were no tranquilizers used on any of the animals.
Authorities admitted to immediately starting to shoot the animals for fear they would get lost in the dark. In the park, there was a large number of Bengal tigers, an endangered species. It is illegal to kill these animals, but evidently law enforcement didn't care about the fact that there are only a couple hundred of these animals left in the wild, and only thousands left in general.
Also among the dead were black bears, which are naturally found in Ohio. I can't seem to grasp why there lives were taken. The owner of the park had previously been charged with animal abuse, but his wife is said to have treated the animals like her own children.
To me, the cruelest of all is killing these animals without exhausting all other options to keep the animals alive. There are many pictures of the dead animals bodies lined up waiting for burial. Humans have a 'policy' to bury our own dead before they rot before our eyesshould we not do this to these animals we killed?
Previously, animals have escaped from the park onto neighboring lawns. I have found no information on whether these animals became violent or were harmed, so I presume they were returned safely and no human lives were harmed. So why not try to capture the animals safely and humanely?
Sadly, only six animals were saved and now placed in the Columbus Zoo. Sixout of 54. Human error, on both law enforcement and the owners part caused a lot of chaos in Zanesville.
May these animals rest in peace; this tragedy that they paid for with their lives was not there fault. Ahhh, humanity. When will we ever learn