Connecticut Chimp Attack and Comparisons to New Jersey
Image Courtesy: Flickr - OctopusHat
February's horrific animal attack in which a chimpanzee attacked a woman in Connecticut leaving her with severe facial injuries, has again stirred debate on the laws governing the keeping of exotic pets.
The woman, Charla Nash was admitted to the Cleveland Clinic after sustaining severe injuries in the attack, when her friend Sandra Herold’s 200-pound chimpanzee Travis attacked her. 911 calls that a panic-stricken Herold made illustrate the brutality of the attack as Travis went after Nash. Emergency medical crew who responded to the scene found Nash in the driveway, and the extent of the mauling made it hard for them to tell if Nash was a man or woman.
The Hartford Courant says that there have been earlier concerns about Travis being out of control. An animal control officer has come forward to report an earlier incident when Travis managed to get out of Herold's car and hold traffic up for hours. The officer Lynn DellaBianca had warned Herold that Travis needed to be kept under control. According to DellaBianca, Harold agreed that Travis would one day have to leave for a sanctuary because he would naturally get more aggressive, and difficult to handle as he got older. Another former Stamford resident has come forward to say that she had made a police complaint in 1996 when Travis bit her. It appears that Travis had begun to display his natural wild tendencies, and Herold should have been alert to the danger that he posed to others.
Connecticut laws allowed Herold to own and keep a chimpanzee as a pet. Now, calls for stricter regulations about keeping exotic pets are getting louder. In New Jersey, our exotic animal laws only allow keeping of exotic pets after an extensive background check of the owner. The New Jersey Exotic Animal Law includes several categories of mammals, birds and primates. The laws lay out strict criteria for granting of permits to own and keep a dangerous animal species. These criteria not only include a thorough check of the person's background and education, but will also confirm that the person has extensive experience handling that animal species. This expertise must include knowledge of how to handle and care for the animal. Besides, the person must have access to well constructed housing with enough barriers to prevent the animal from having any contact with public. These laws mean that fortunately it's harder for Jerseyans to keep an exotic, and possibly dangerous pet, and even rarer that we would have a incident like the one that occurred here.
