Zebra mauls man’s arm in Ohio

OAN Brooke Mallory
UPDATED 4:40 PM – Tuesday, March 14, 2023

After his zebra bit him in the arm and almost tore off his body, Ronald Clifton (72) was taken to Circleville Hospital.

Pickaway County Sheriff’s office received the incident report. At around 5:30 p.m., deputies were sent out to a fenced-in pasture.

The injured man was lying on the ground with his right arm covered by his sleeve when deputies arrived. According to the dispatch information, the injured man was bitten completely by a zebra.

A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office confirmed that the man was being treated at Grant Medical Center, and that he will not lose his arm as he had assumed.

The man was eventually helped by deputies who claimed that the zebra still behaved frightfully and even tried to charge at an officer’s vehicle. This strategically placed vehicle was meant to prevent the man from getting to the animal.

Clifton was accompanied by family members as he received assistance and was taken to an ambulance.

“They’re definitely wild animals and still have, like, kind of all those wild instincts and behaviors… Male zebras are territorial. Their job is to get and hold a group of females that he wants to breed, and he’ll be very protective of those against any kind of challenger,” Dan Beetem, director of animal management at The Wilds, said:

The Wilds is a research and conservation center in Cumberland Ohio.

The deputy to PCSCO gave his account, saying that the zebra became aggressive because it was protective of the six or five female zebras also in the field.

Deputies stated that they began to blow air horns and scream at the zebra in an attempt to scare it away, but it still continued to rush towards them as well as the injured man and his family.

Clifton’s family warned officers to be safe and not turn their backs towards the animal as it will attack most often.

They allowed the officers to take the zebra down in dire situations.

A deputy shot the zebra in the head because of its aggressive behavior.

“The zebra had already shown aggression. And speaking with some of the family members and friends, apparently, this zebra has been aggressive in the past… I told (the deputy) I fully support what he did. He did what was best to protect the people on the scene there. And I talked to some people on the scene there, and they said they would have ended up doing the same thing if the deputy had not done that,” Matthew Hafey, Pickaway County Sheriff

According to the Ohio Department of Agriculture, zebras are not considered livestock. “dangerous wild animals.”

The footage from the incident that was taken by deputy video cameras was slightly different than what authorities reported. This is why animal rights activists are outraged at the handling of this situation.

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