Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters has been reviewing the results of a Cincinnati police investigation of the incident last weekend.
Advertisement
The Cincinnati Zoo plans to reopen its Gorilla World exhibit next week with a reinforced, higher safety barrier following the death of a gorilla to protect a boy who had entered its enclosure.
The zoo said that was the first breach at Gorilla World since it opened in 1978.
It’s unclear whether the police department recommended that charges be filed against the mother.
Pittsburgh’s weapons team responded in 2012 after a 2-year-old boy fell into an African painted dog exhibit and was killed.
The Cincinnati police have handed over to a prosecutor the results of their investigation into the actions of the family of a boy whose foray into an enclosure at the city’s zoo led to the killing of an endangered gorilla, officials said Thursday.
Zoo workers were forced to fatally shoot a critically endangered western lowland gorilla after a three-year-old boy climbed into the gorilla’s enclosure.
The new barrier is 42 inches (107 cm) high with wood beams at the top and bottom and knotted rope netting, the zoo said in a statement. Deters will hold a Monday afternoon news conference, said spokeswoman Julie Wilson.
“He’s dragging my son!”
The backlash following Harambe’s death this past weekend has been vast – some blame the mother of the child who crawled into the exposure for his death, others believe the zoo made the correct decision in shooting the gorilla, but not much has been said about what will happen to the other gorillas who lived with Harambe. “I can’t watch this!” a woman says in the 911 call on Saturday.
“We do already have help started there, OK”, the operator tells her.
Advertisement
She briefly interprets what the gorilla may have been doing when it had the boy – referencing a similar event in 1996, when a child fell into a gorilla exhibit in Chicago – but mostly she shows concern for those affected by the incident.
