Chimp With Troubled Past On The Loose

There's a chimp on the loose in San Bernardino County.

County animal control staff and volunteers were fanning out over the weekend across a densely forested area near the town of Devore in search of Moe the chimpanzee.

A friend of Moe's owners says the chimp escaped Friday from his cage at an animal sanctuary near the town.

Mike McCasland says he thinks Moe may be lurking in a nearby part of the San Bernardino National Forest.

"We could find him in a heartbeat if we could just get a break," McCasland told the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. "He's somewhere out there."

Moe lived with his owners in their West Covina home until 1999, when the animal bit a police officer and a female visitor.

Owner St. James Davis was nearly killed in 2005 by two chimps who attacked him while visiting Moe at the Bakersfield sanctuary where the animal was living at the time.