CINCINNATI, May 31 (Reuters) - Police are investigating possible criminal charges in a Cincinnati Zoo incident in which a gorilla was killed in order to rescue a 4-year-old boy who had fallen into its enclosure, a prosecutor said on Tuesday.

An animal rights activist group said on Tuesday it had filed a federal negligence complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture against the zoo, seeking the maximum penalty of $10,000 following Saturday's killing of the 450-pound ape named Harambe.

"The failure of the Cincinnati Zoo to adequately construct this enclosure to protect both the public and the animal held prisoner there is a clear and fatal violation of the Animal Welfare Act," Stop Animal Exploitation Now said in its complaint letter to the USDA.

Mounting outrage over the shooting death of the Western lowland silverback, which is an endangered species, sparked more than 460,000 signatures on online petitions at Change.org, some demanding "Justice for Harambe" and urging police to hold the child's parents accountable.

Zoo officials were not immediately available for comment on either the negligence complaint or the police investigation but said on Monday the exhibit was safe and exceeded required protocols.

Authorities are taking a second look at the possibility of criminal charges in the incident after police initially said no one was charged.

"The incident at the Cincinnati Zoo involving the young child who fell into the gorilla enclosure is under investigation by the Cincinnati Police Department," Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters said in a statement. "Once their investigation is concluded, they will confer with our office on possible criminal charges."

Witnesses said the child had expressed a desire to get into the enclosure and he climbed over a 3-foot (1-meter) barrier, falling 15 feet into a moat. His mother on Facebook said he suffered a concussion and scrapes but was otherwise fine.

Zookeepers shot Harambe after the 17-year-old animal grabbed the boy and dragged him around. Thane Maynard, director of the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens, on Monday stood by the decision to shoot the gorilla, saying he was not simply endangering the child but actually hurting him.

The Gorilla World exhibit has been closed since the incident and will reopen on Saturday.

Tanya Espinosa, a spokeswoman for the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said the complaint from Stop Animal Exploitation Now had been received but that an investigation had not yet been opened.

A review of the USDA inspection reports showed the zoo was cited in March 2016 for failing to close two doors near a service hallway that allowed two polar bears to enter the area housing dangerous items including cleaners and electrical wires. The bears had to be tranquilized before they could be returned to their enclosure, the report said.

The zoo also was cited in November 2014 for deteriorating wood in two enclosures for horses and one for Eastern black and white colobus monkeys, the report said.

The USDA regulates zoos, circuses and marine mammal parks under the Animal Welfare Act, the only federal law that requires a minimum standard of humane treatment and care for animals in research, exhibition, transport and by dealers.

There is actually controversy around the killing? The kid was about to get killed. Humans always come first, sorry. Animal rights people are idiots.

sad situation

They could not wait on the unpredictablity of traquilizers. Some people obviously don't care.


Luckily the child, is for the most part unharmed. That sure was some scary looking mess though.

HuMpThAnG said:

CINCINNATI, May 31 (Reuters) - Police are investigating possible criminal charges in a Cincinnati Zoo incident in which a gorilla was killed in order to rescue a 4-year-old boy who had fallen into its enclosure, a prosecutor said on Tuesday.

An animal rights activist group said on Tuesday it had filed a federal negligence complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture against the zoo, seeking the maximum penalty of $10,000 following Saturday's killing of the 450-pound ape named Harambe.

"The failure of the Cincinnati Zoo to adequately construct this enclosure to protect both the public and the animal held prisoner there is a clear and fatal violation of the Animal Welfare Act," Stop Animal Exploitation Now said in its complaint letter to the USDA.

Mounting outrage over the shooting death of the Western lowland silverback, which is an endangered species, sparked more than 460,000 signatures on online petitions at Change.org, some demanding "Justice for Harambe" and urging police to hold the child's parents accountable.

Zoo officials were not immediately available for comment on either the negligence complaint or the police investigation but said on Monday the exhibit was safe and exceeded required protocols.

Authorities are taking a second look at the possibility of criminal charges in the incident after police initially said no one was charged.

"The incident at the Cincinnati Zoo involving the young child who fell into the gorilla enclosure is under investigation by the Cincinnati Police Department," Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters said in a statement. "Once their investigation is concluded, they will confer with our office on possible criminal charges."

Witnesses said the child had expressed a desire to get into the enclosure and he climbed over a 3-foot (1-meter) barrier, falling 15 feet into a moat. His mother on Facebook said he suffered a concussion and scrapes but was otherwise fine.

Zookeepers shot Harambe after the 17-year-old animal grabbed the boy and dragged him around. Thane Maynard, director of the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens, on Monday stood by the decision to shoot the gorilla, saying he was not simply endangering the child but actually hurting him.

The Gorilla World exhibit has been closed since the incident and will reopen on Saturday.

Tanya Espinosa, a spokeswoman for the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said the complaint from Stop Animal Exploitation Now had been received but that an investigation had not yet been opened.

A review of the USDA inspection reports showed the zoo was cited in March 2016 for failing to close two doors near a service hallway that allowed two polar bears to enter the area housing dangerous items including cleaners and electrical wires. The bears had to be tranquilized before they could be returned to their enclosure, the report said.

The zoo also was cited in November 2014 for deteriorating wood in two enclosures for horses and one for Eastern black and white colobus monkeys, the report said.

The USDA regulates zoos, circuses and marine mammal parks under the Animal Welfare Act, the only federal law that requires a minimum standard of humane treatment and care for animals in research, exhibition, transport and by dealers.

YES!!!!!!!!!!

interesting article (kinda sorta) related to the topic:

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from: http://seedmagazine.com/c...ersonhood/

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Will according rights and "dignity" to nonhuman organisms halt research?

by Ed Yong

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Two major legal developments in the past few months are deepening a schism between leading primatologists, biologists, and ethicists around the world. A pending Spanish law that would grant unprecedented protections to great apes, and a recent extension to a Swiss law that protects the “dignity” of organisms, are the latest fronts in a battle to redefine the meaning of human rights, and indeed whether such rights are the exclusive domain of humans.

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At the forefront of the battle is the Great Ape Project (GAP). Established in 1993, it demands a basic set of moral and legal rights for chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, and orangutans. This June, GAP persuaded the Spanish Parliament’s environmental committee to approve a resolution supporting those goals.

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Other countries, including the United Kingdom and New Zealand, have taken steps to protect great apes from experimentation, but this is the first time that actual rights would be extended to apes. The resolution establishes a set of laws based on GAP’s principles, which Spain promises to implement by the end of the year. Those laws would ban the use of apes in experiments or entertainment or commercial ventures, and they would set higher standards for their conditions in captivity. The message is clear: These animals are not property. “It’s a historic breakthrough in reducing the barrier between humans and nonhuman animals,” says Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher and the head of GAP.

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Not everyone is comfortable with GAP’s rights-based approach, however. Primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University says, “I do think we have special obligations to the great apes as our closest relatives, but if we give rights to apes, what would be the compelling reason not to give rights to monkeys, dogs, rats, and so on?”

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GAP’s goals are, for now, focused on apes, but Singer agrees that there is no clear place to draw the line. “Speaking personally, I feel we should extend rights to a wide range of nonhuman animals,” he says. “All creatures that can feel pain should have a basic moral status.”

That list would include other mammals, including the bulls regularly killed in Spanish stadiums. This iconic sport, along with Spain’s lack of any ape research of its own, makes it an odd location from which to launch an opening salvo. Nevertheless, it’s where GAP’s efforts first gained traction, and it will be the origin of future efforts.

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Such moves are already under way. “The Green Party in Germany is preparing two bills supporting the Great Ape Project,” says GAP’s Pedro Pozas. In Austria this August, GAP member David Diaz visited Hiasl, a former research chimpanzee who has become an ape-rights icon as his sanctuary faces bankruptcy and he faces homelessness. Hiasl’s fate hangs on being legally declared a person, an effort in line with GAP’s greater mission. The matter is now being debated in the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights.

.In the US, there is greater resistance to the idea of ape rights, though Congress has begun to make inroads. In April, three representatives, including former animal researcher Roscoe Bartlett, introduced a bill called the Great Ape Protection Act. It calls for scientists to cease invasive research on great apes and “rigorously apply existing alternatives” but stops short of extending rights to the animals themselves. Weaker than its Spanish counterpart, the bill would nevertheless have an impact in a country that performs more ape research than any other.

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In the EU, renowned chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall has called for a gradual end to all biomedical animal experimentation. However, the paragon of the animal rights movement is the unaligned nation in the EU’s midst. Switzerland’s strict constitutional laws on animal experiments are based on a slippery concept; since 1992, they have demanded that researchers respect the “dignity of creation.” They protect animals from “unjustified interventions on their appearance, from humiliation and being disproportionately instrumentalized.” As of September 1, these laws even require that animal owners keep social species, such as dogs, goldfish, and guinea pigs, in groups of two or more.

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At its most extreme, the Swiss concept of dignity could soon be applied to plants. A discussion paper by the Federal Ethics Committee on Non- Human Biotechnology defines the “decapitation of wild flowers at the roadside without rational reason” as “morally impermissible.” While this clause is generally viewed as being rhetorical, more worrisome is the Committee’s preliminary stance on the genetic engineering of plants: only permissible if their “reproductive ability and adaptive ability are ensured.”

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Kevan Martin, of Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology, is one researcher whose work has already been affected by this dignity-based approach. He uses live macaques to understand how the brain changes during learning, and his experiments have been approved by ethical reviews many times over. But in 2006 the Swiss Health Department refused to renew Martin’s licence after a local advisory committee protested that his work had no immediate clinical relevance. “The result is that basic science on primates is effectively not possible,” says Martin. “This research is not a luxury. The failure of gene therapy and AIDS vaccines is due to pressure to produce ‘cures’ before understanding the underlying biological mechanisms, which cannot be accessed by experiments with humans.”

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In the US, Edwin McConkey, a biologist on the team that initially proposed the Chimpanzee Genome Project, agrees that apes should be treated with more respect. He acknowledges, however, that there is at least one area in which applying human standards to apes would hinder important experimentation. “To understand the genetic basis for human uniqueness, it is necessary to compare both gene structure and gene expression in humans and apes,” says McConkey. “This means obtaining early embryos from apes by surgical termination of pregnancy.”

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One kind of primate experiment seems to be safe in this debate. “I would strongly argue for continued noninvasive studies,” says de Waal, “ones we wouldn’t mind applying to human volunteers.” Far from harming apes, such research could even enrich their lives — the chimpanzees that de Waal works with are so enamored of computers that they will actually line up for cognitive tests. Once their work is done, many can now be relocated to places like ChimpHaven, an outdoor facility that acts as a retirement home.

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De Waal sits on that facility’s board of directors. The care it extends to chimps is typical of the approach he favors. “What if we drop all this talk of rights and instead advocate a sense of obligation?” he asks. “In the same way that we teach children to respect a tree by mentioning its age, we should use the new insights into animals’ mental life to foster in humans an ethic of caring in which our interests are not the only ones in the balance.”

Originally published December 12, 2008

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[Edited 5/31/16 18:16pm]

XxAxX said:

sad situation

I agree and now

[Edited 5/31/16 18:17pm]

2freaky4church1 said:

There is actually controversy around the killing? The kid was about to get killed. Humans always come first, sorry. Animal rights people are idiots.

Says the human. A zoo has got to be the dumbest human invention ever created. That being said, the zoo should be sued for building a fence that a kid could get through.

[Go to P & R and start that discussion snip - luv4u]

it's a horrible situation

did they do the right thing shooting the gorilla to save the child?... imo yes... that's without me having knowledge of other possible solutions

should the parents be held accountable for letting this happen?... yes... it's their responsibility to look after their child... i know accidents happen... but there were unfortunate consequences in this case

should the father's criminal past be brought into this?... absolutely not... it's completely irrelevant

should the zoo be held accountable?... yes... if the enclosure is easy enough for a 4 year old to get into

do zoos suck?... yes

i have compassion for the parents... it would have been awful to see that happen to your child... but it's horrible that this amazing animal had to be slaughtered due to the negligence of dumb humans

i'm glad the kid is ok

I was torn when I first saw this story on TV. The mother's quip "accidents happen," seemed rather flippant. She should have had her child in her eyesight at all times, especially in a zoo where kids get overly excited and think it's safe to approach wild animals. And how was it that the child was able to get past the barricades or safety wall around the ape's enclosure? I don't know. I'm still torn between holding the parent responsible and the zoo. I at first thought that the ape should have been tranquilized, but it was reported that could agitate the animal even more and make the situation worse. I thought the tranquilizer would take effect within seconds, but I guess it doesn't work that fast on primates.

2freaky4church1 said:

There is actually controversy around the killing? The kid was about to get killed. Humans always come first, sorry. Animal rights people are idiots.

3rdeyedude said:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I knows how y'all feel about these things. It's still funny.

3rdeyedude said:

Dalia11 said:

And the parents are to blame. A 4 year old should not be walking around the zoo unsupervised!

Yes and if the childs parents were watching their kids we wouldn't be having this conversation and the Gorilla would still be alive.

Bill Cosby could have tranquilized the gorilla.

TrivialPursuit said:

Bill Cosby could have tranquilized the gorilla.

SheLovesMeNot said:

And to think, the mother of this child is a administrator at a child care facility.

And many Health care Physicians are Fat slobs but that does not stop them from helping skinny people lead Healthy lives..

NorthC said:

I think the mother feels bad enough as it is, even without everybody judging her. Why do people always look for someone to blame?

It was a tragic accident; who hasn't had a child get away from them? The outcome could have been worse, a little boy could have been killed but I guess for some that's a minor detail.

(Image Source: The Mirror)

After crawling through the barriers, the boy fell 12 feet into the moat area, and was grabbed by the 17 year old gorilla known as 'Harambe' (weighing in at 400lb/180kg).

It has been reported that a full 10 minutes passed before action was taken by the zoo, shooting the animal dead.

The public question why a tranquiliser gun was not used, though officials say that this method would not have been appropriate as it can take up to 10 minutes for the sedative to have effect, and could have provoked aggressive behaviour in the gorilla, increasing the danger of the situation.

TD3 said:

NorthC said:

I think the mother feels bad enough as it is, even without everybody judging her. Why do people always look for someone to blame?

I feel worse for her child

kpowers said:

TrivialPursuit said:

Bill Cosby could have tranquilized the gorilla.

lol bad bad bad

SheLovesMeNot said:

And to think, the mother of this child is a administrator at a child care facility.

Maybe she thought the gorilla would be a good substitute for her while she "just took my eyes off him for just a second," or whatever excuse she gave. I still think she's somewhat, ir not entirely, accountable for her child getting in the predicament. I wouldn't be adverse to making her pay for the care of a new resident gorilla, but in a perfect world, it wouldn't need human care because it would be in the jungle free and wild where God intended it to be.

CharlieGriffin said:

SheLovesMeNot said:

And to think, the mother of this child is a administrator at a child care facility.

Maybe she thought the gorilla would be a good substitute for her while she "just took my eyes off him for just a second," or whatever excuse she gave. I still think she's somewhat, ir not entirely, accountable for her child getting in the predicament. I wouldn't be adverse to making her pay for the care of a new resident gorilla, but in a perfect world, it wouldn't need human care because it would be in the jungle free and wild where God intended it to be.

We all know she was on her phone

kpowers said: