Image
The blue macaque that attacked.
A police hunt has been launched for the owner of a private zoo whose monkey killed a six-week-old baby after breaking free.

The boy Vladimir (Vova) Verbitsky was attacked as he lay in a pram at his home in Crimea and the unnamed man who kept a menagerie of exotic animals is now believed to have fled to Ukraine.

The blue macaque was tethered in the yard of the wealthy zoo owner's house in Kacha, a suburb of Sevastopol.

Police say the monkey gnawed through the rope and jumped a fence at the Verbitsky family home, leaping into Vova's pram and biting his face.

'The baby's head was almost torn to pieces and the child was thrown out of his pram," said one source.

The distraught parents found Vova two metres from the pram.

The owner of the private zoo rushed the badly bleeding baby in the arms of his mother Agnessa, 26, to hospital but he died on the way.

Svetlana Verbitskaya, the child's grandmother, told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper: 'Agnessa went into the house to the kitchen for a minute, to stir her soup, and it was then when the monkey jumped into the pram.

'The angry macaque rent the baby's head and then threw him some two metres away. We failed to save the baby - it all happened within a few seconds.'

The mother, who has another child Evelina, 18 months, was only absent momentarily, she said.

'Agnessa would never leave Vova unattended,' she said. 'We had asked our neighbours so many times to take better care of their zoo.

'One day his Cameroon goats came into the garden. One another occasion his Vietnam pigs ran in, and last year the vet service came here to take away a bear that was dying of hunger. I heard he was taken to the zoo in Yalta. They they got the new bear instead.

'This is a rich family. they own a hotel and a shop, and they keep these animals just for fun. Do you think the owner asked us to forgive him? Not at all. He ran away to Sevastopol where he has a flat there.

'And his house is locked now - the animals are alone crying in their cages.'

'Our Vova was buried in the closed coffin. But at the last moment his mother Agnessa asked to open it so she could say good bye to her little son,' said Svetlana.

The man is known to hold a Ukrainian passport and it is feared he has fled there to escape Russian police in Crimea.

He sent an aide to offer financial assistance to the Verbitskys - but they refused.

The monkey was caught and is likely to be destroyed by lethal injection after the expected court action.

Police say it highlights the danger of private menageries.

The local branch of Russia's powerful Investigative Committee has started a criminal investigation against the man for 'accidentally causing the death of an underage child', for which the maximum penalty is two years in jail.

The baby was killed on July 9 and buried three days later, but almost two weeks later police have failed to track down the man.