10 Year Anniversary of Exotic Animal Release in Muskingum County

ZANESVILLE, Ohio- It was 10 years ago, on October 18, 2011, when Terry Thompson set 50 wild animals loose from his 73-acre farm on Kopchak Road before taking his own life.

During this incident, the Sheriff’s Department made a decision to shoot that showed threat to the area. Sheriff Matt Lutz now shares his experience and what stood out on this day 10 years ago.

“Just realizing that it’s been 10 years since we had that incident. I still recall like yesterday because of all the news media that have continued to ask about things in the last 10 years and then during this time all the legislative issues that we’ve been working on and trying to help create law that would prevent this from happening again,” Lutz said.

A positive and negative impact came out of this situation, says Sheriff Lutz. He said the negative thing is that Zanesville can be known for the animal incident, but the positive thing was that no one was attacked.

However, Lutz said state and federal laws has definitely evolved since then and talks about the different dynamic from then to now.

“To know that those types of animals were here in the state of Ohio and that someone could collect, and cross breed animals together and to keep them here, that dynamic really played a huge part of the whole story. Once that story got out, you start hearing how people feel about these animals,” Lutz stated. “There’s a lot of passion for these animals and a lot of people are upset that they thought we did the wrong thing and thought that there were other ways we could have dealt with that… I think locally folks supported 110 percent of what we did and realized that our folks had to do a job.”

Lutz added how through time, they’ve been able to put the bad rumors to rest and can really look at how much the community has grown from law change to also the creation of a task force that has a holding cell for exiotic animals when caught.