A 24-year-old man now linked to an unusual string of crimes that kept the Dallas Zoo on the lookout for missing animals told police that after he swiped two monkeys from their enclosure, he took them onto the city’s light rail system to make his getaway, court records show.
Davion Irvin also said he loves animals and that if he’s released from jail, he would steal more, the documents said.
Irvin, who remained jailed Tuesday on $25,000 bond, was arrested last week after asking questions at a downtown Dallas aquarium about animals there.
He is charged with six counts of animal cruelty and two counts of burglary. An attorney listed for Irvin in court records did not respond to a request for comment.
“On the night of Jan. 29, I waited until dark, jumped a fence to get onto zoo grounds, cut the metal mesh of an enclosure and took the two emperor tamarin monkeys,”
Irvin told the police, according to arrest warrant affidavits
He then got on the city’s light rail before walking to the vacant home where he said he kept his animals.
Police, acting on a tip from the public, found the monkeys, named Bella and Finn, on Jan. 31, the day after they were discovered missing, at the empty home in Lancaster, a Dallas suburb about 15 miles south of the zoo.
Officers also found multiple cats and pigeons, in addition to dead feeder fish and fish food that had disappeared from a staff-only area of the zoo earlier in January but wasn’t reported stolen at the time, affidavits said.
