In a similar incident at the Brookfield Zoo in IL in 1996, a 3-year-old boy had plunged 20 feet into an enclosure of a female gorilla, Binti Jua.
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“We’ve got a child that’s fallen into a gorilla moat”, a zoo official tells dispatch.
A spokesman for Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters (DEE’-turs) says Cincinnati police have concluded their probe.
“He’s dragging my son!”
The Gregg family’s statement said: “We are thankful to the Cincinnati Zoo for their actions taken to protect our child”.
FOX19 NOW obtained three 911 calls, with the first coming into dispatch at 3:52 p.m. on Saturday.
In 2013, a woman in New Mexico faced a child abuse charge after a bobcat attacked her 3-year-old son at a Carlsbad zoo.
The zoo’s risky animal response team shot and killed the gorilla within 10 minutes to protect the boy after he dropped some 15 feet into a moat. The woman, who authorities say dangled her 2-year-old son over a railing, initially was charged with child endangering but pleaded no contest to aggravated trespassing. “You’re going to make him riled up”. Witnesses told investigators that the woman, her brother and the boy crossed safety barriers in front of the exhibit and got up close to the bobcat’s enclosure.
But officials at the main USA body that oversees breeding of zoo animals said it was highly unlikely that the Western lowland gorilla’s contribution to the nation’s “frozen zoo” of genetic material of rare and endangered species would be used to breed.
A federal inspection less than two months ago found no problems with the gorilla exhibit, but earlier inspections reported issues including the potential danger to the public from a March incident involving wandering polar bears inside a behind-the-scenes service hallway.
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The family says the boy is doing well at home after being treated at a hospital. Some have offered money to the family, which we do not want and will not accept.
