A day after the devastating fire in the monkey house of the Krefeld zoo, the police consider the case to be largely resolved. The alleged perpetrators reported themselves to the investigators, said Gerd Hoppmann from the Krefeld criminal police at a press conference.
Accordingly, it is a 60-year-old Krefeld woman and her two adult daughters. The three women had said to the police that they had five sky lanterns risen on New Year's Eve, it said.
The police assume that they are actually the cause of the big fire. According to the investigators, the monkey house had been set on fire by a so-called sky lantern that had been started nearby.
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Krefeld Zoo: silent mourning for beloved monkeysSky lanterns, also called wish lanterns, consist of thin, mostly white tissue paper and a candle or a container with fuel paste in the middle. If ignited, they can float far through the air. It has been prohibited in North Rhine-Westphalia to start such lanterns since 2009.
The investigators emphasized that the women volunteered. Accordingly, they were apparently not aware of the damage sky lanterns can do.
In the video: So the fire raged in the monkey house
Thilo Schmuelgen / REUTERS
In the flames, more than 30 animals were burned alive in the early New Year's morning - including five Borneo orangutans, a West African chimpanzee and two lowland gorillas. The monkey house burned out completely, the financial damage goes into the millions.
Two chimpanzees survived, the 40-year-old female Bally and the young male Limbo. Both suffered only minor burn injuries. The gorillas' enclosure was spared the fire in the adjacent monkey house