The woman who recorded a toddler being dragged by a gorilla at Cincinatti Zoo prompting the shooting of the animal, says many people talking on social media have it all wrong.
Kim O'Connor recorded the disturbing video saying all she wanted was a snapshot of the gorilla, but she states that everything changed 60 seconds later when she "heard a splash".
Then, the 400-pound gorilla began dragging the toddler.
"I'm telling everyone stop screaming, stop screaming," O'Connor said.
The screams made the situation even worse.
"He (the gorilla) definitely responded to the noise of the crowd, because when we got the crowd to stop and be quiet he sat still longer, but the minute the volume went up and people really started yelling, the more he felt like he had to get that boy away," O'Connor added.
"It was not a friendly, 'I'm going to take him to the zookeeper and let him go.' He was dragging him around like a doll and they had to do what they had to do, that boy only had minutes left, I know he only had minutes left."
O'Connor doesn't blame the mother who she says, just moments before the incident, told the boy not to go in. She described what the boy said to his mother.
"'I want to go in the monkeys, the gorillas, I want to go in' and she kept saying, 'No you don't, no you don't'," O'Connor said.
She says it's not the zoo's fault either.
"That same exhibit I would take my children there now with no changes. Would I watch them closely? Sure, I would," O'Connor said.
O'Connor adds she shot other video but says she has not released it because it's too disturbing.
She says investigators have not contacted her about the incident at this point.
Article from USA Today.
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