This case has been all over the news in the last week. A Silverback gorilla named Harambe was shot dead at the Cincinnati Zoo. A four-year-old child had fallen into the animal’s enclosure, and the zoo officials killed the animal to supposedly protect the child.
The boy fell 12 feet into the enclosure. The gorilla was not showing frightening behavior. The onlookers said that the noise from the scared onlookers actually frightened Harambe.
Someone started a petition on Change.org, according to NBC, asking that the parents of the child be held responsible for the death of the gorilla. It earned 138,000 signatures as of May 31, and now has over 500,000 signatures.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said that the zoo should have had better protection for Harambe:
RIP Harambe.
A magnificent gorilla dies because a zoo failed to make its barriers safe. https://t.co/E5682u7SsL pic.twitter.com/dCwNKLIKJ1— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) May 29, 2016
The Cincinnati police did not charge the family because they don’t believe a crime was committed. The prosecutor has decided not to press any charges against the parents. Prosecutor Joseph Deters said:
“By all accounts, this mother did not act in any way where she presented this child to some harm. She had three other kids with her and turned her back. And I’ve gotten dozens if not hundreds of emails about this case, and if anyone doesn’t believe a 3-year-old can scamper off really quickly, they’ve never had kids, because they can, and they do.”
One witness, Kimberly Ann Perkins O’Connor said:
“The little boy himself had already been talking about wanting to go in, go in, get in the water and his mother is like, ‘No you’re not, no you’re not.'”
Many people on the internet were outraged over the death of the gorilla. They were calling for the parents to be charged with child endangerment.
The US. Department of Agriculture will be evaluating the zoo’s part in the incident. They will make sure that the Animal Welfare Act is being enforced.
Hopefully, this zoo will make their enclosures safer so incidents like this won’t happen again.
Featured image via YouTube screengrab.
