Howard the Tortoise Back Home in Colorado Springs After Theft
Howard has been greeting customers at Scales ‘N Tales on North Academy Boulevard for fifteen years. He is not a small pet.
This African spurred tortoise weighs around forty pounds and belongs to the world’s third-largest tortoise species, one that can eventually top 150 pounds and live well past a hundred years.
That made what happened on June 17 hit even harder.
A man walked into the store, placed an order, and waited while an employee went to grab it from the back. Then he walked outside, picked Howard up from his open-air pen, put him in a car, and drove off.
Howard spent his afternoons in that pen soaking up sunlight, something staff did every day without issue, until that one moment changed everything.
How the Community Helped Track Him Down
The store posted about it on social media, and the post spread fast. People who had never even met Howard were sharing his photo, asking questions, keeping an eye out.
A lot of that traction came from people forwarding updates through local groups and channels the way neighbors look out for each other when something like this happens nearby.
That community push is exactly what cracked the case open.
Police worked off surveillance footage and citizen tips, and investigators from multiple units were able to tie the suspect to a string of other retail thefts across the city.
At about 5 p.m. Thursday, a Tactical Enforcement Unit located a vehicle connected to an earlier felony theft on Sinton Road. Someone in that vehicle gave detectives information on the suspect’s whereabouts.
That led Metro Retail Theft and Burglary Detectives to 37-year-old Justin Edwards. Store owner Ronald Bohnert said he got a call around 8 p.m. Thursday telling him police had Edwards in custody, but Howard was not with him.
“They said, ‘He’s not telling us where the tort’s at, but we’re going to check another address,'” Bohnert said. “I think they went to that very last resort address they had for this man, and sure enough that’s where he was.”
Detectives traced Howard to an apartment in the 1000 block of Verde Drive, where Detective N. Holloway found him in a room, tucked under a blanket.
“I don’t know if they were trying to hide him or make him sleep, because he moves around a lot when the sun’s out,” Bohnert said.
Howard’s Homecoming
Howard was reunited with the store and his family around 8:30 p.m. Thursday, and what happened next says a lot about him. He walked straight to the front door, did a couple of laps around the store, ate some food, and went to bed.
“They brought him in, he walked right up to the front door to go back in,” Bohnert said. No hesitation. He knew exactly where he was.
By Friday, regulars and strangers alike were stopping by to welcome him back.
“A lot of people are visiting him and showing their love to him today,” Bohnert said, “and we’ve got a bunch of treats for people to hand-feed him and interact with him. The outpouring from the community was pretty amazing.”
The Charges Against the Suspect
Edwards was booked into the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center and is expected to face felony theft and animal cruelty charges. That second charge matters.
Taking a live animal, transporting it without proper care, and leaving it somewhere unfamiliar counts as cruelty under the law, not just theft.
Bohnert believes this was a random crime of opportunity, a “once-in-15-years kind of thing,” and credits the community’s attention as much as the police work for the quick recovery.
“That guy probably couldn’t even walk around the city without somebody noticing him and recognizing him off social media,” he said.
Cases like this are also a reminder that police response to an unusual situation can escalate fast.
We covered a similar example where a Nye County confrontation ended in a death hours after deputies were called in, a very different case but one that shows how quickly things can turn once police get involved.
Why This Matters
This was not Howard’s first close call as a species, either. A forty-pound Sulcata tortoise was stolen from a Wisconsin yard a few years back, valued at roughly four thousand dollars. A seventy-pound store mascot tortoise was once taken right out of a display window in Illinois.
Exotic pets kept outdoors, even briefly, are easier targets than most owners realize.
Between 1990 and 2010, an estimated 9,000 African spurred tortoises were stolen from the wild alone, a number conservation groups call a conservative one. You can read more on that pattern through the World Wildlife Fund’s breakdown of sulcata tortoise risks.
What This Means for Your Own Home Security
Scales ‘N Tales is already rethinking how Howard spends his outdoor time, with more eyes-on security planned for the future. It is a fair response.
Cameras only help if they are actually working when it counts, and we have seen cases where criminals went a step further and used a Wi-Fi jammer to knock out home security cameras before breaking in, which is worth knowing if you are relying on a wireless setup.
Outdoor security gaps are not always about theft either. In one case we reported, a home shooting in Braselton left one person dead and another fighting for her life, a reminder that visible security at home matters for more than just preventing theft.
If you keep pets, exotic or not, in an outdoor space, even a fenced one, visible cameras and a second set of eyes go a long way. As Bohnert put it, “I don’t think Howard belongs to just me at this point. He belongs to the community.”
Has something like this ever happened near you, a pet, package, or anything taken right off your property? Tell us in the comments, we would love to hear it.
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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only, based on publicly available news reports at the time of writing.
