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n the latest development of a brutal orangutan slaughter nearby Kutai National Park in East Kalimantan, five Teluk Pandan residents, including a teenager, have been named suspects in the case.

The five suspects, Muis, 36, Andi, 37, Rustam, 37, Nasir, 54 and 13-year-old teenager who is identified only as HH, were arrested in a village in Teluk Pandan subdistrict, an enclave in the national park, on Thursday.

The incident started when Muis found the orangutan had roamed into his plantation in search of food on the early morning on Feb. 3.

“Muis was the first to shoot [the orangutan] after learning that an orangutan had entered his oil palm plantation,” East Kutai Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Teddy Rismawan said in a press conference on Saturday.

The move agitated the orangutan and Muis later called for help from his neighbor Nasir, who, along with his grandson HH, arrived at the scene with air riffles.

The arboreal mammal, the police said, tried to escape the plantation, but the three suspects continued to hunt and shoot the ape, which was aged between 5 and 7 years old.

As they were about to run out of pellets, HH also found additional ammunition and borrowed another air riffle from a villager named Sandi.

The animal managed to escape its three pursuers by climbing a tree in the middle of a lake near the border of Kutai National Park. But two more suspects, Andi and Rustam joined the three and began shooting at the ape which was hiding in the tree, where local people found it in a critical condition a day later.

“It was not until the suspects [completely] ran out of pellets that they stopped shooting the orangutan at around 11 a.m.,” Teddy said, adding that they used more than two boxes of pellets, in which each box contained 60 pellets.

The orangutan died two days later despite receiving medical treatment from authorities and a local conservation group. Some 130 air rifle pellets were found in the creature’s body, along with 19 fresh stab wounds.

The police arrested four adult suspects after naming them suspects on Saturday, while decided not to detain the teenage suspect.

Despite abuse of orangutans being publishable by five years’ imprisonment under the wildlife conservation law, orangutans remain threatened by human-wildlife conflict as the apes are considered pests in plantations.

Following the case, Kutai National Park rangers will now try to reach out people in villages in and around the Kutai National Park and educate them on how not to harm the apes when driving away the animals from their neighborhoods in the region, which is home to some 2,900 orangutans.

“The campaign will cover Teluk Pandan, Sangkima, South Sangatta, Rantau Pulung and Menamang-Sebulu,” Kutai National Park head Nur Patria Kurniawan said.

Authorities have earlier considered whether to ban the possession of air rifles in the villages nearby the national park to prevent orangutan abuse cases.