The call occurred just moments before keepers at Cincinnati Zoo shot the 17-year-old silverback dead, a decision they said they took to ensure the three-year-old boy’s safety.
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Authorities updated the child’s age after initially reporting that the boy was 4 years old, wrote the Cincinnati Enquirer.
But that incident ended much differently.
Michelle Gregg screams at the operator: “There’s a male gorilla standing over him” before she says to her son “be calm, be calm”. The boy made a full recovery.
“I tried to see exactly what was happening-it looked as though the gorilla was putting an arm round the child-like the female who rescued and returned the child from the Chicago exhibit”. It says some people have offered money and they recommend a donation to the Cincinnati Zoo in Harambe’s name.
Also, Wednesday, the family thanked God and the zoo for saving the boy.
In its statement on Wednesday, the family said, “Our child has had a checkup by his doctor and is still doing well”. Another petition calling for a law that would bring charges to people who bring harm to an endangered animal “due to the negligence”, had more than 169,000 signatures. “I need someone to contact the police”.
Since then, there have been numerous questions about the how the child got past the barriers around the exhibit. “He’s dragging my son, I can’t watch this”, the mother adds, according to the call.
A record of police calls shows nine minutes passed between the first emergency call about the boy falling into the enclosure and when the child was safe.
Asked to comment on Tuesday – as footage of the drama ran on a loop on United States television networks – Donald Trump said it appeared officials had no choice but to shoot the gorilla.
Zoo officials said they had collected a sample of the gorilla’s sperm, raising hopes among distraught fans that Harambe could sire offspring even in death.
On Aug. 16, 1996, a 3-year-old boy fell into the gorilla’s den at the Brookfield Zoo.
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We have not named the boy or his mother, who was with him when he got into the exhibit-the woman being wrongly attacked on Facebook is from the Cleveland area.
