Pair left baby monkeys trapped in a hot car parked at Tennessee water park, police say
Police in eastern Tennessee said they were called to a water park on Wednesday after management reported finding a dead monkey in someone’s car.
Now two people from Indiana are facing criminal charges.
Nova Brettell and David Paul Brettell, both 54, were charged with aggravated animal cruelty, the Sevierville Police Department said in a news release. Sevierville is just north of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge on the North Carolina border.
The investigation is ongoing, police said, and additional charges are possible.
Soaky Mountain Waterpark is a 50-acre attraction that opened to the public last summer. Management at the park called police around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
“When officers arrived, they found a nine-week old marmoset monkey deceased in a car in the parking lot,” Sevierville police said. “Another marmoset monkey was also in the vehicle.”
Police said the second monkey, a five-week-old marmoset, was in distress due to the “extreme interior vehicle heat.”
The temperature outside was about 87 degrees at the time, law enforcement said. According to the ASPCA, that means the car’s internal temperature could have reached 120 degrees within 30 minutes.
Officers transported the monkey about 40 miles north to the Appalachian Animal Hospital in Morristown, where staff said it was “very dehydrated.”
The hospital reported the marmoset’s condition was improving by Thursday afternoon.
Marmosets are small monkeys from South America that “fit comfortably in an adult human’s hand,” according to the science news website Live Science. They behave similarly to squirrels and live between 5 and 16 years in the wild.
Though some are kept as pets, Live Science reported caring for Marmosets is difficult because “they require a very specific diet and access to UV light to stay healthy.”
