The child climbed the old fence, crawled through bushes and dropped into a moat May 28.
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Zoo director Thane Maynard is reflected in the glass of a bulletin board honoring their deceased gorilla Harambe as he holds a news conference at the Gorilla World exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, Tuesday, in Cincinnati.
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters said on Monday that there is no evidence the child’s mother acted inappropriately in the situation.
The exhibit has been closed since a three-year-old boy made it into the gorilla enclosure, and zoo staff had to shoot a 17-year-old gorilla to save the boy’s life.
“We work hard every day to make sure that the Cincinnati Zoo is completely safe for visitors, guests, families, and children”. One that’s now smaller since the killing of Harambe to protect a little boy late last month who fell into the gorilla exhibit.
“The exhibit we had was safe”, Maynard says.
The gorilla dragged the child through the enclosure.
For the first time in ten days the Gorilla World Exhibit will be back open to visitors but with some changes. Some commenters vilified the zoo for shooting the animal, while others blamed the mother for not watching her child more closely.
The world has spent the past week debating the case of a gorilla that was shot at the Cincinnati Zoo after a toddler fell into its enclosure.
The Cincinnati Zoo received top marks from AZA in its most recent inspections, according to WLWT.
Deters said he has been a bit surprised by the reaction to the gorilla’s death. “It does not equate human life”, Deters said.
“In the case of this incident, which involved a child and a critically endangered animal, our collective goal is to take steps to assure it doesn’t happen again”, Kris Vehrs, the interim president and CEO of the zoo association, said in a statement.
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An animal protection group has urged that the zoo be fined. The USDA, which inspects the zoo annually, will look into whether the facility was in compliance with federal laws that monitor the treatment of animals in research and exhibition.
