Randy the zebra’s killer remains at large

Authorities are looking for person who shot and killed beloved animal

The reward to find the killer keeps growing. The cops keep hoping to solve the caper. And the online outrage won’t stop, even two weeks after Randy the zebra was shot to death as he grazed in his pasture on California’s isolated Lost Coast.

“Whoever did this is just one sick horrible person!” Tara Savage wrote on Redheaded Blackbelt, a local blog in this oceanside ranching community. “This is just so sad! I really hope they catch this SOB and put the screws to him! Such a beautiful animal that people love to be able to stop, look at and take pictures of. Now he’s gone.”

Savage is not alone. People all over the world have responded, both with comments on social media and in cash donations, to voice their anger and help find Randy’s killer.

“WHO KILLED RANDY THE LOST COAST RANCH ZEBRA?” read the blog headline in large bold letters. “REWARD FOR ARREST RISING, OVER

$5500 RAISED SO FAR.”

Randy lived, along with his life partner Josephine and their daughter L.C. (short for Lost Coast), at a ranch on Mattole Road. On May 13, just before 3 p.m., the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office received a report that a zebra had been fatally shot near the small community of Petrolia. The dead animal was found in a hayfield about 20 yards from the roadway with what appeared to be a single gunshot wound.

“People are really upset around here,” said Stacy Hanson, spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office, which is handling the case. “I had a guy call and say he wanted to donate $1,000 to the reward and he didn’t even know the people who owned the zebra. All these random people are just so mad; they’re wondering why anyone would kill this poor animal.”

Police aren’t saying what, if any, evidence they’ve recovered from the scene or whether they have any strong leads or suspects in the shooting. Josh Griego, the caretaker for the ranch where Randy lived the past dozen years or so, told the Lost Coast Outpost that he got a call that morning from a neighbor who said they’d seen one of the zebras lying down on the ground. Griego thought at first that it was Josephine and that she might be giving birth because he’d figured lately that she may have been pregnant. But when he got there he found Randy, dead and somewhat bloated. The animal had a single bullet wound in its side and Griego said he found a single .223 Rem, a rifle cartridge casing, nearby.

Other neighbors later told him that they thought they’d heard shooting in Petrolia earlier that morning.

Griego, who suspects the shot went straight through Randy’s side, said he has no clue who might have wanted to harm Randy because, he said, nobody at the ranch has “any grievances with anyone in the community. It was probably some tweaker or someone who was drunk.”

The response to the shooting, both along the Lost Coast and around the globe, has been dramatic. Local Realtor Jim Redd said he and the owner quickly set up a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooter. The guy who owns the zebra “asked me what I thought the reward should be so that we’d get attention and I told him $5,000, so he put up $4,000 and I added $1,000,” Redd said Thursday morning, as he was about to launch a new website devoted to the fundraising effort called randysreward.com. “I put that up on Facebook and the thing has gone viral ever since. We’ve now raised over $6,000 and the Facebook page has been shared more than 1,000 times by people all over the world.”

Redd said the ranch is about 700 acres, with a mile and a half of ocean frontage, and the ranchers run cattle on it along with keeping the three zebras. The loss of Randy has hit local residents hard, said Redd.

“Those zebras are an icon around here,” he said. “Everyone who lives here knows them and people are really upset that someone would stoop that low and kill an innocent animal. The other two zebras are OK, but they were probably standing there when Randy was killed.”

Anyone interested in the reward with information about who might have shot Randy the zebra is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at 707-445-7251.

Randy’s killing brings to mind other zebra slayings along the California Coast. In 2011, three zebras that escaped from the Hearst Ranch were shot and killed by Cambria-area ranchers who said the exotic animals were threatening the safety of their livestock.

And in January, another zebra was found dead and partly skinned on a beach but authorities said it had died of natural causes and that no foul play was suspected. Investigators with the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department, however, said they could not explain how or why the zebra was skinned after it died.