Australian man killed by wild kangaroo he may have kept as a pet, police say

PERTH, Australia — For the first time since 1936, a kangaroo was blamed for fatally attacking a man in Australia.

>> Read more trending news

The victim, a 77-year-old man, was found by a relative with “serious injuries” on his property in Redmond, 250 miles southeast of Perth, The Associated Press reported.

Police told BBC that they were forced to shoot and kill the marsupial, which was preventing paramedics from treating the victim.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation identified the victim as Peter Eades. Police told ABC that Eades had been keeping the 3-year-old kangaroo as a pet.

There are ways to legally own a kangaroo as a pet in Australia, but doing so requires a permit.

“You do need a special permit to be able to do that,” Tanya Irwin, who works at the Native Animal Rescue service in Perth, told the AP. “I don’t believe they really give them out very often unless you’re a wildlife center with trained people who know what they’re doing.”

No information was available about whether Eades had a permit for the kangaroo on his property.

“We don’t know what the situation was; if he was in pain or why he was being kept in captivity and unfortunately … they’re not a cute animal, they’re a wild animal,” Irwin told the AP.

While Australia is home to an estimated 50 million kangaroos, there has not been a deadly attack reported since 1936, when a man died from injuries sustained while trying to rescue his two pet dogs from a large kangaroo, The New York Times reported.

“They’re large animals, they’ve got a lot of weapons, sharp nails and sharp teeth, and certainly if they’re cornered or in some sort of distress, that can be quite dangerous,” Graeme Coulson, a kangaroo behavior expert, told ABC. “They don’t distinguish between people and other kangaroos … and that gets particularly risky when the male grows, and becomes bigger and stronger, and then you can have problems like this.”

©2022 Cox Media Group