(File Photo of a Gavel)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Hershey, PA) Forty-three-year-old Carrie Sortor and sixty-one-year-old Stephen Wilson, both of Lititz, Pennsylvania, were charged on Sunday by Derry Township Police with one count each of a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of children after police expressed that their seventeen-month-old child went through a wooden barrier perimeter fence and put a hand in a metal fence of the wolf enclosure at ZooAmerica in Hershey on Saturday. The area was restricted and police stated in a news release that evidence showed they both walked about twenty-five to thirty feet away from the child to a seating area with benches and appeared to be paying attention to their cellphones. The child suffered minor injuries in the incident because according to a statement from the zoo, a wolf approached “and made contact with the child’s hand,” and the wolf’s response “is consistent with natural animal behavior, and was not a sign of aggression.”