ORLANDO, Fla. – Officials in Florida say a veteran 40-year-old trainer at SeaWorld was fatally injured by a whale when she slipped and fell in its tank.
SeaWorld Orlando President Dan Brown says officials are investigating but it appears to be an accident.
Orange County Fire Rescue spokesman John Mulhall said paramedics were called to the Shamu Stadium at the theme park resort where they found a worker who could not be revived.
Park guest Victoria Biniak told WKMG-TV that the trainer had just finished explaining to the audience the show they were about to see.
The whale “took off really fast in the tank, and then he came back, shot up in the air, grabbed the trainer by the waist and started thrashing around, and one of her shoes flew off,” Biniak told the station.
“He was thrashing her around pretty good,” she said. “It was violent.”
The guests were asked to leave and the park was closed.
There have been several previous attacks on whale trainers at SeaWorld parks.
In Nov. 2006, trainer Kenneth Peters, 39, was bitten and held underwater several times by a 7,000-pound killer whale during a show at SeaWorld’s San Diego park. He escaped with a broken foot. The 17-foot-long orca who attacked him was the dominant female of SeaWorld San Diego’s seven killer whales. She had attacked Peters two other times, in 1993 and 1999.
In 2004, another whale at the company’s San Antonio park tried to hit one of the trainers and attempted to bite him. He also escaped.
In December, a whale drowned a trainer at a Spanish zoo.
At the Orlando SeaWorld, the body of a naked man was found scratched, bruised and draped over a 5-ton orca named Tilikum in July 1999. Daniel Dukes, 27, reportedly made his way past security at SeaWorld, remaining in the park after it had closed. Wearing only his underwear, Dukes either jumped, fell or was pulled into the frigid water of Tilikum’s huge tank.
An autopsy ruled that he died of hypothermia in the 50-degree water. But they also said it appeared Tilikum bit the man and tore off his swimming trunks, likely believing he was a toy to play with.
Dukes’ parents filed a lawsuit against the park later that year but ended up withdrawing it.
Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.
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this is bullshit how could they let that dame whale live i say kill the stupid fucker and eat it for dinner. you are not suppose to let some thing like that live so you are suppose to kill it .
this is bullshit how could they let that dame whale live i say kill the stupid fucker and eat it for dinner. you are not suppose to let some thing like that live so you are suppose to kill it . that pissed me the fuck off when i heard that
I have a correction, the park was not closed, only that section of the park was evacuated. The park remained open. No one was allowed back in that section, that is all. There also seems to be a contradiction in your information. One source says the whale pulled her in, another says she slipped in.