Police on Monday charged a New Jersey woman with trespassing after she jumped over a fence to approach a tiger’s cage at a zoo.
Now Jon Bramnick is pointing to the incident to highlight a bill he wrote that would designate a specific type of animal-related trespassing.
“We need to pass this bipartisan bill to ensure that people who trespass into restricted animal enclosures face legal and financial consequences,” Bramnick, a two-term state senator said in a release. “This type of reckless behavior endangers the life of the trespasser and often results in law enforcement killing the animal.”
The bill establishes the offense of “reckless trespass involving a wild animal,” with varying consequences depending on whether the animal was killed due to the trespassing.
A person whose entrance into an enclosure ends in an animal’s death would face between three and five years in prison and up to a $15,000 fine. A person whose trespassing leads to an injured animal could face up to 18 months in prison.
State Sen. Brian P. Stack (D-Union City) co-sponsored the bill. Bramnick filed this version of the bill in January.
Bramnick said in the release that a 2021 Florida incident in which a zoo employee lost his arm and law enforcement killed a tiger inspired him to write the bill.