Whale Kills Trainer at Sea World!
A SeaWorld employee died this afternoon during an incident at SeaWorld’s Shamu Stadium.
SeaWorld, rescue personnel and the Sheriff’s Office are not revealing the identity of the victim, although a local TV station is reporting that it was a female employee who was killed after she was grabbed by one of the theme park’s whales at the start of a public show.
Park guest Victoria Biniak said that the trainer was a veteran of SeaWorld and had just finished explaining to the audience what they would see during the performance when the whale came up from the water and grabbed the woman and started thrashing her around.
She said sirens went off and everyone was forced to leave the stadium. Guests were evacuated from the area, and the whale show was cancelled. The park is not shut down.
Orange County Fire Rescue personnel arrived on scene within five minutes of receiving a 911 call for an unknown medical condition just prior to 2 p.m. The woman was dead when rescue officials arrived.
The whale involved in the incident is named Tillikum, and apparently “Tilly” has a controversial past…
we should not hold animals against there will for them to jump around a tank for some fat tourist who wants to see a beautiful animal turned into a way of entertainment it just makes me sick i feel sorry for the womans family but we should not force and animal against its will to act to stupidly i saw we let them go back into the wild apart from the ones that are born in the tanks that dont know how to live in the sea
Lo and behold, yet again we see the misplaced theory of “mistaken identity” applied (in this instance) to Killer Whales. Not only are the most finely tuned predators (White sharks) prone to (what else) “mistakenly” thinking humans they bump, bite and taste actually a seal, now many marine biologists are “theorizing” that Telly the Killer Whale “mistakenly thought” the trainer was a toy and was “just playing”. What nonsense.
“The victims? Well, they all fell into the pool- and then drowned and then, well, Telly just wanted to play with him thinking the human was a toy.”
Only a fool or an apologist would impute “playful” instincts to a predator that routinely takes live seals out to sea and savagely beats them for no apparent reason, with more conscious disregard than a cat will toy with a small bird.
Killer Whales are arguably the smartest creature in the sea. But they are killers and aggressive towards their prey. Their abusive and violent beatings of seals are case studies in unbridled wrath.
If not removed from active duty, Telly will just kill another person. This death was avoidable. How sad.
Wild animals is always gonna be wild, in one way or other
I am curious? If arrogant, hairless monkeys developed the capacity to speak and had the capacity for abstract thought, would they try and catch a 15,000 lb. killing machine and make it do stunts?
was this attck random before the EMT’s came working on him or what.