A horn shark was on its way back to the San Antonio Aquarium Monday after a trio allegedly stole it right out of a tank two days prior, in an incident that came amid Shark Week.
The incident unfolded on Saturday, when an employee spotted three people near an interactive shark touch pool, the aquarium said on Facebook.
The three allegedly waited by the pool for an hour before they made the grab, the aquarium added.
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The shark, which was described as being 16 inches long, was taken right out of a pool as an attendant spoke with another visitor.
The suspects used a net to capture the shark; they then went to a “filter room” where they “poured the bucket of bleach solution that employees used for the disinfection of tools into our cold water exhibit filtration system, causing harm to other wildlife,” the aquarium added.
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The shark was placed in the bucket and then placed in a stroller as the trio headed out to the parking lot.
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A member of aquarium management caught up with the trio in the parking lot but they weren’t permitted to look in the stroller or the vehicle.
“When we first got the call, we thought it was kind of a hoax being that it was Shark Week last week,” Leon Valley police Chief Joseph Salvaggio told KSAT 12, an ABC affiliate in San Antonio.
Salvaggio said the group likely knew what they were doing, and that they very possibly targeted that shark specifically.
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Aquarium manager Jenny Spellman told Global News that all three suspects were eventually apprehended and that the shark was on its way back to the facility in a transport bucket.
Police are treating the theft of the shark as “theft of property valued between $750 and $2,000.”
Police have recovered the vehicle that may have been involved in the incident, Salvaggio told MySanAntonio.com.
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It’s tough to say how long a shark can survive out of its tank, Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told MySanAntonio.com.
He said a shark is likely to be “physiologically compromised” if it’s not put in another tank within 10 minutes.
There was no information immediately available about the sharks condition.
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