Gorilla Shot Dead After Boy, 3, falls into Enclosure at
Cincinnati Zoo
By The Associated Press
Updated: May 31st, 2016
It started
as a regular day at the Cincinnati Zoo, but terror broke out as a 3-year-old
boy fell down into the shallow moat of the Silver-Back Gorilla enclosure.
Onlookers screamed for help as his mother yelled, “Mommy loves you!” down to
her son. Video footage was recorded of the large 450-pound gorilla sitting with
the child before aggressively dragging in through the water by his leg. Zoo
officials were faced with the extremely difficult question of how to carry out
the situation. It was unclear whether or not the gorilla was going to act in a
violent way towards the boy or not. Officials knew that in this situation,
every minute mattered and that they had to make a force of action quickly. The
boy was reported to being in the enclosure for 10 minutes before zoo officials
shot the 450-pound gorilla named, Harambe. It was a very unfortunate situation
that caused uproar of different public opinions on how the situation should
have been handled.
The
events of this situation are tragic, but I understand that the zoo had very
limited options. Using a tranquillizer would have taken too long to work and would
have likely made the gorilla more aggressive, which would increase the chances
of it attacking the boy. One person stated that people are only reacting so
negatively toward the death of the animal because it was in the eye of the
public. This is unfortunately a very true statement. Hunters and poachers constantly
kill endangered animals in the wild but since people don’t hear about it on the
news, like they did with this story, people don’t show as strong of a concern
about the matter. This story brought out a lot of issues about animals being
locked up in zoos and has started a movement to show the negative affects of
zoos. The death of Harambe was a sad decision that had to be made in order to
save the boy’s life, but just like many others, I feel that it’s unfair that
this endangered animal had to be killed by animals after we locked him up in
that cage.
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