A witness to Wednesday's killer whale attack at the SeaWorld amusement park in Florida remembers seeing the orca with trainer Dawn Brancheau's body in its mouth.
"When he raced around in the tank and came back. He bobbed up in the air, you know, bobbed up, came down with a person in his mouth, was shaking her violently. A shoe flew off, and sirens immediately started going off, people were running everywhere."
40-year-old Brancheau, a trainer with 16 years experience at SeaWorld, was dead when rescue workers arrived. Named Tillikum, the killer whale has been blamed for drowning a trainer in Canada in 1991, and at SeaWorld in 1999, authorities found a naked man's body across its back, and said he'd likely drowned after suffering hypothermia. SeaWorld trainers were not allowed in the water with Tillikum because of his violent past.
We treated Tillikum differently based on the incidents, his previous ones, as well as his size, being 1,200 pounds. We had a very specific training process we had around him, we are very careful around him, we had a limited amount of experienced trainers that worked him, so to the best of our ability, we tried to provide an environment where we worked with them safely, we never got in the water with him like we did with our other killer whales.
A statement from Brancheau's family was read aloud by SeaWorld Orlando's President Dan Brown.
"You have all heard what an amazing trainer Dawn Brancheau was and it is true. She was the best. It came naturally to her. Being a trainer was a lifelong dream that she achieved. She loved her job, she loved her animals."
The family asked the public and the media to respect their privacy as they cope with Dawn's death.
Katharine Jackson, Reuters.
