Remembering Harambe 5 years after gorilla s death at Cincinnati Zoo
Copyright Associated Press
John Minchillo
A boy brings flowers to set beside a statue of a gorilla outside the shuttered Gorilla World exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, Monday, May 30, 2016, in Cincinnati. A gorilla named Harambe was killed by a special zoo response team on Saturday after a 4-year-old boy slipped into an exhibit and it was concluded his life was in danger. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
and last updated 2021-05-28 14:23:24-04
CINCINNATI â Friday marked five years since tragedy hit Gorilla World at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. On May 28, 2016, a 3-year-old boy fell into the exhibit, leading to the death of long-time zoo resident, Harambe, the 17-year-old western lowland silverback gorilla.
MAY 27 Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the shooting death of Harambe, America’s Gorilla.
The 17-year-old animal was felled by a single gunshot fired by a member of the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden’s Dangerous Animal Response
Team (DART).
The killing of Harambe came after a three-year-old boy entered the Ohio zoo’s Gorilla World enclosure, where the male lowland gorilla “dragged the small child around by the ankle in the shallow water of the moat,” according to a United States Department of Agriculture inspection report.
After Harambe carried the child up a ladder out of the moat, he dragged the boy “several times on the ground of the gorilla enclosure,” prompting a DART member to conclude that the child was in “imminent, life threatening danger.”