Kangaroo named after 'Psycho' character Norman Bates leaps to freedom after rescue from Australian home

'He didn't even touch the top rail at two metres. He jumped pretty bloody high'

The kangaroo leapt over a 2.2m fence to escape. (Five Freedoms Animal Rescue)

A kangaroo called Norman Bates has leapt over a 2.2 metre (7.2 feet) wall at the animal shelter that took him in after he smashed up a home in the southern Australian city of Melbourne.

Rescuers had named after the killer in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho when they pulled him from the property Sunday where he had smashed through a window and destroyed

"There was just blood everywhere," said Manfred Zabinskas, who told The Independent that the loss of the animals’ habitats to residential areas could be one of the reasons behind the break-in.

Mr Zabinskas, who runs the Five Freedoms Animal Rescue shelter was called in by police to retrieve the runaway roo.

Norman was put in a large, state-of-the-art enclosure with other kangaroos, but Mr Zabinskas warned that every one of the creatures was "different and some take longer than others to settle down and come to terms with captivity while they receive care and treatment.”

However, he was nonetheless surprised by the escape.

"We've not seen a kangaroo so desperate to get out as Norman," he said. "He didn't even touch the top rail at two metres. He jumped pretty bloody high."

Helen Round, a volunteer at Five Freedoms, said in a post on social media that he was "now in a vast expanse of forest, safe from cars, trucks and people,"

Australia has roughly 45 million kangaroos and it is not rare for them to be seen in backyards in cities such as the capital, Canberra, that are surrounded by bushland.

In drought-stricken areas they are even more likely to be driven into populated areas in search of food and water.

A large eastern grey kangaroo halted play at a soccer match in Canberra last month after hopping on the pitch and lying down in the goal mouth.

In the southern state of Victoria, where drought is less of an issue, kangaroos are coming into conflict with people as housing has expanded rapidly to areas where the marsupials live.

"When they ultimately get landlocked between developments, the government's only management is to shoot the kangaroos to get rid of the problem," Mr Zabinskas said.

Reuters contributed to this report