Teen thief Aquinas Kasbar admits to stealing Isaac, America’s oldest lemur from California zoo
- Man who made off with Isaac, Santa Ana zoo’s 32-year-old ring-tailed lemur, faces prison time and a US$100,000 fine
The plastic container left overnight on July 27, 2018 in front of a Marriott Bayview hotel in Newport Beach, California bore two handwritten notes.
“This belongs to the Santa Ana Zoo it was taken last night please bring it to police,” read one.
“Lemur (with tracker),” read the other.
Inside, mercifully unharmed despite the lack of ventilation holes, was Isaac, a 32-year-old ring-tailed lemur, believed to be the oldest of its kind in North American captivity.
Someone had broken into the local public zoo overnight and cut holes in the enclosures housing lemurs and capuchin monkeys. While staff had quickly recaptured most of the primates (“They’re pretty easy to round up; they follow grapes,” noted zoo manager Ethan Fisher), the geriatric lemur was missing.
The mystery of Isaac’s wild night out was solved Monday, when federal prosecutors in Southern California announced that they had reached a plea agreement with a 19-year-old Newport Beach teenager for one misdemeanour count of unlawfully taking an endangered species.