Two people were sentenced in a court in Lille, France, Thursday for illegally keeping a black panther that escaped onto a rooftop in Armentieres, France, in 2019.
The 41-year-old male defendant was given a suspended sentence of 18 months in jail and fined $17,000 and was also banned from owning animals for five years. The 41-year-old female defendant was given a suspended sentence of four months and was banned from owning animals for two years, according to French wire agency Agence France-Presse.
AFP did not provide the names of the defendants; the woman is Nawel T., according to the French newspaper Liberation.
The man in the case, Nordine Barka, told the local La Voix du Nord newspaper in November 2019 that “I obviously knew that it’s illegal to keep a panther and I was going to report it one day. But for me, it was a long way off.”
The panther, named Louise at the time, escaped from a window and roamed onto the Armentieres rooftops before being sedated and captured by local police, according to the local La Voix du Nord newspaper.
The man added, “I no longer saw her as a panther. She was like a big affectionate baby, who only asked for cuddles,” as translated from English.
The panther was taken to the Maubeuge Zoo but was then taken from the zoo before being rediscovered at an animal sanctuary in the Netherlands under the name Akilla in January 2020, according to La Voix du Nord.
“It has a lot of fun, is playful and interacts well with the neighboring panther through the fence,” caretaker Wendy Karsten told AFP.
