Photographer Arrested for Unlicensed Photo Shoots with Exotic Animals

A photographer has been arrested for allegedly using exotic animals, including a lemur and a spider monkey, in unlicensed photoshoots.

32-year-old photographer Vernon Crowfey III, the owner of the company “Photogeniks,” was arrested in Towson, Maryland, after an undercover officer arranged a shoot with the animals. Jayden Evans, a collaborator who owns “Tarzan Exoticz” which sells personalized photo shoots with exotic animals, was also arrested alongside Crowfey.

Crowfey and Evans came to the authorities’ attention after the pair conducted a photo shoot in a parking garage at a Baltimore County mall on June 13. Crowfey allegedly photographed three women posing with the exotic animals, including snakes, the spider monkey, and the lemur. Video footage and photos circulating online show part of the garage floor lit on fire while women posed with exotic animals like snakes and a monkey.

Investigators found Instagram and Facebook accounts, as well as a website offering photoshoots with the exotic animals.

“Vernon Crowfey was observed in a multitude of joint posts with Jayden Evans where he is the photographer for the animal shoots, and Jayden Evans is the animal handler during the photoshoots,” charging documents state, according to WBALTV11.

Police say an undercover officer later arranged a photoshoot involving the lemur and spider monkey at a location in Parkville on July 16. A search warrant was executed at Evans’ apartment in Maryland, where both men were arrested.

Investigators say they went to Evans’ residence and found snakes, lizards, rabbits, a tarantula, and several other animals. The charging documents also claim a lemur and a spider monkey were not given proper care and that the monkey’s “spinal cord was fully exposed through its fur.” The Maryland Zoo is now taking care of some of the animals, including the spider monkey. A spokesperson for the zoo declined to comment on the health of the animals.

According to charging documents, Crowfey and Evans now face several misdemeanors and a single felony charge in connection to the photo shoot in the mall parking garage. In Maryland, privately owning a primate is illegal, with the law stating that “a person may not import into the state, offer for sale, trade, barter, possess, breed, or exchange a live nonhuman primate.”

Crowfey tells CBS News Baltimore that the pair had permission to have the photo shoot in the mall’s parking garage.

“We spoke with the security at the mall as well. We explained to him that we was gonna have the fire flame photo shoot. He told us basically just be out before the mall closed,” Crowfey tells the news outlet.

“We talkin’ about an empty parking lot, with no civilians, full of concrete and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a parking lot be set on fire with lighter fluid,” the photographer adds.