The arrest of a 24-year-old man accused of taking two monkeys from the Dallas Zoo has exfoliated some light on a mysterious string of events there as police said Friday that they’ve also linked him to the escape of a small leopard and an incision in the hedge of another monkey niche. What’s still unclear What police believe led him to do it. Davion Irvin, who was arrested Thursday, has been charged with six counts of beast atrocity and two counts of burglary, police said.
Irvin’s arrest followed a sighting of him at another home for fantastic creatures, The Dallas World Aquarium, where a hand honoured him from news content of the missing monkeys. “We do believe that (Irvin) was looking to commit another crime,” Dallas police spokesman Kristin Lowman said at a Friday news conference. On Thursday, police said they entered a tip Irvin was seen at the Dallas World Aquarium near beast exhibits. When officers responded they saw Irvin get onto a DART rail, a train system serving the Dallas area. Officers later spotted Irvin hard and took him to police headquarters for questioning. The two emperor tamarin monkeys, Bella and Finn, were unaccounted for in their niche Monday morning, according to zoo officers, who said it was incontinently clear the niche had been “designedly compromised”. Police said the niche was cut. Police set up the monkeys unharmed in an empty home outside megacity limits on Tuesday. On Jan. 13, arriving workers noticed that a clouded leopard named Nova was missing from her pen, and police said a slice tool had been designed to make an opening in her quadrangle. The zoo closed as a hunt for her got afoot, and she was set up that day near her niche.
Zoo workers had also set up gash in a quadrangle for langur monkeys, though none got out or appeared harmed, police said. On Jan. 21, workers arriving at the zoo set up an exposed lappet- faced shark named Leg dead. Gregg Hudson, the zoo’s chairman and CEO, called the death “veritably suspicious” and said the shark had “a crack”. Lowman said Friday that they’re still probing but the death of the shark has not been linked to Irvin.