BONNER SPRINGS, Kan. (WDAF) – Police in Kansas have located the owners of a young kangaroo after they believe a driver hit the animal on an interstate Wednesday night.
Officers from the Bonner Springs and Edwardsville police departments found the injured kangaroo hiding in tall grass near I-435 and Kansas Highway 32 in Kansas City, Kansas, around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Police originally believed the animal was a wallaby. The owner later clarified that it was a young kangaroo.
The owner said the kangaroo, named Star, had jumped out of the window of his car.
Pictures provided by police in Bonner Springs show the kangaroo with numerous cuts and injuries.
BONNER SPRINGS, Kan. — Bonner Springs Police found an injured wallaby on I-435 June 28, 2023, They believe it was hit by a car. (PHOTO: Bonner Springs Police) 
BONNER SPRINGS, Kan. — Bonner Springs Police found an injured wallaby on I-435 June 28, 2023, They believe it was hit by a car. (PHOTO: Bonner Springs Police) 
EDWARDSVILLE, Kan. — Police from both Edwardsville and Bonner Springs found an injured wallaby near I-435 on June 28, 2023. (PHOTO: Edwardsville Police Department) 
EDWARDSVILLE, Kan. — Police from both Edwardsville and Bonner Springs found an injured wallaby near I-435 on June 28, 2023. (PHOTO: Edwardsville Police Department) 
EDWARDSVILLE, Kan. — Police from both Edwardsville and Bonner Springs found an injured wallaby near I-435 on June 28, 2023. (PHOTO: Edwardsville Police Department) 
EDWARDSVILLE, Kan. — Police from both Edwardsville and Bonner Springs found an injured wallaby near I-435 on June 28, 2023. (PHOTO: Edwardsville Police Department)
“It was laying down and not very mobile from the time I showed up,” said Kendra Anthony, a Bonner Springs animal control officer. “I know when Edwardsville first got there [the kangaroo] was on the opposite side of the highway, so it had crossed over three lanes of traffic to get to the median. But once I got there, the capture went pretty smoothly.
The officers transported the animal to the police station and gave it a bed to sleep in overnight.
By Thursday morning, Edwardsville police located the owners, who said the kangaroo was part of a mobile petting zoo.
“The kangaroo is legally owned by the petting zoo within the regulations that the state of Missouri has for it because I don’t see anything online that says this operation is operating in violation of anything,” said Captain Mike Krause, of the Bonner Springs Police.
Kangaroos are native to Australia, nearly 10,000 miles from where police found Star on Wednesday.
While rare in the Kansas City area, this isn’t the first time police have responded to a roaming marsupial. In 2011, a wallaby ended up at the Kansas City Zoo after it wandered away from home and onto the property of a retirement center. A few years later in 2014, a wallaby escaped from its owners’ backyard in Olathe, Kansas, and bounced down a neighborhood street.
More recently, a camel that escaped from a live nativity scene roamed loose for hours before it was captured in December 2021.
