Gorilla drags boy through moat in Cincinnati zoo

A gorilla was fatally shot at an Ohio zoo this weekend after it picked up a young boy who had tumbled into an exhibit, officials said.

The encounter at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden occurred Saturday afternoon when the boy crawled through a barrier and fell into a moat at the facility’s outdoor gorilla center, zoo director Thane Maynard told reporters.The boy wasn’t seriously hurt in the fall, Maynard said at a news conference, but after he dropped into the enclosure, the gorilla, a 17-year-old male named Harambe, “went down and got him.” The animal grabbed and dragged the child, Maynard said, and that’s why officials determined that the boy’s life was in danger.“It seemed very much by our professional team, our dangerous-animal response team, to be a life-threatening situation,” Maynard said. “And so the choice was made to put down, or shoot, Harambe. And so he’s gone.”The 4-year-old boy was taken to a children’s hospital, according to a news release from the zoo. His name was not released.“It’s a sad day all the way around,” Maynard said. “The right choice was made; it was a difficult choice. We have protocols and procedures, we do drills with our dangerous-animal response team. But we’ve never had a situation like this at the Cincinnati Zoo, where a dangerous animal needed to be dispatched in an emergency situation.”Zoo employees opted to put down the animal instead of using tranquilizers because in “agitated” situations, it can take time for the drugs to take effect, Maynard said. Harambe also would have had a “dramatic response” to a tranquilizer’s effect, he said.Maynard praised the workers tasked with handling the incident, saying they had a “tough choice.”“Because they saved that little boy’s life,” he said. “It could have been very bad.”The outdoor gorilla center has been part of the zoo for more than 30 years, Maynard said at the news conference. The child apparently went under a railing and through wires to get to the moat wall and then fell into the water. The gorilla had the child for about 10 minutes before it was fatally shot, he said.

‘It could have been very bad': Gorilla killed after boy falls into Cincinnati zoo exhibit https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/05/29/it-could-have-been-very-bad-gorilla-killed-after-boy-falls-into-cincinnati-zoo-exhibit/ The boy crawled through a barrier at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden on Saturday and fell into a moat at the facility's outdoor gorilla center, zoo director Thane Maynard said. article Washington Post