Zoo Comes Under Fire for Killing Gorilla Which Witnesses Say Trying to Protect Boy Who Fell Into Enclosure

A zoo has been slammed for killing a gorilla after a four-year-old boy falls into his enclosure.

Staff and officials of the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio in the US received backlash after shooting and killing a 17-year-old African western lowland gorilla weighing 180 kilograms named Harambe after he dragged the screaming boy away from a wall and through a moat filled with water.

The boy crawled through a railing barrier and fell three metres into the gorilla’s moat before he was dragged by Harambe in the water for about 10 minutes on Saturday afternoon at the Gorilla World exhibit.

Witness Kim O’Connor told WLWT5 that people are shouting there’s a boy in the water. She said that she wasn’t sure if it was when the crowd started screaming that the gorilla got scared or the too many people hanging on the edge before he pulled the boy down away further from the big group. She also said that the gorilla looked like he was trying to protect the boy from panicked bystanders who may have aggravated the tense situation.

She also said that the boy had said, prior to the fall, that he wanted to go into the enclosure and get in the water, but his mother said, ‘No, you’re not, no, you’re not’. She can also be heard yelling, “Mommy’s right here…mommy loves you,” before saying “Isaiah be calm,” when the boy started crying.

WLWT reported that a fire department incident report stated that the gorilla was ‘violently dragging and throwing the child’, who was between the gorilla’s legs when he was shot. These can be seen in a video taken by onlookers at the zoo, but more graphic portions were cut from the footage.

The boy was taken to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, for non-life threatening injuries and he is expected to recover. Hospital officials said they couldn’t release any information on the boy.

Zoo Director Thane Maynard agreed with the response of the zoo’s dangerous animal response team. “[The officials] made a tough choice and they made the right choice because they saved that little boy’s life. It could have been very bad,” he said.

Mr Maynard also said that the gorilla didn’t seem to be attacking the child, but he said it was “an extremely strong” animal in an agitated situation. He said tranquilizing the gorilla wouldn’t have knocked it out immediately, leaving the boy in danger.

However, he mourned the loss of the gorilla, which came to Cincinnati in 2015 from the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas. In a news release, he said: “We are all devastated that this tragic accident resulted in the death of a critically-endangered gorilla. This is a huge loss for the zoo family and the gorilla population worldwide.”

Zoo officials said three gorillas were in the enclosure when the boy fell in the moat, but the two female gorillas were called out immediately.

Despite this, animal lovers slammed the response to kill the gorilla — claiming he was only trying to protect the child, The Sun reported. Others called it a “senseless death” and a “murder” while some lashed out at the child’s parents, even saying they should be charged with neglect.

Calls for justice for the gorilla, who just celebrated his 17th birthday yesterday, are being spread over social media with the hashtag #RIPHarambe, which started trending on Twitter and over 4500 had liked the Facebook page Justice for Harambe.

Mr Maynard said that it was the first time that the team had killed a zoo animal in such an emergency situation.

He said that the area around the gorilla exhibit was closed off on Saturday afternoon, but the Gorilla World area would be open as usual on Sunday, believing the exhibit remains safe.

He also said that they are still investigating.

African western lowland gorilla species is native to the dense forests of central Africa where they are believed to number around 100,000. Conservationists consider the apes to be critically endangered.

Sources: Dailymail.co.uk, News.com.au, Sunshinecoastdaily.com.au, Au.news.yahoo.com, and Theaustralian.com.au