KENTWOOD, Mich. -- Kim O'Connor went to the Cincinnati Zoo this weekend with her family for a day of fun, but never thought she would see a small child and a 400 pound gorilla come face to face, much less that she would be the one to capture the encounter on video.
On Saturday, a 4-year-old boy was able to somehow make his way into the gorilla enclosure. The video that O'Connor captured shows Harambe the gorilla grabbing the boy and dragging him through the water. O'Connor said she saw the gorilla pull the boy around like a rag doll, then minutes later heard a gun shot.
Harambe the Gorilla. Courtesy photo.
"I honestly kept telling myself they probably just put him to sleep, but then again I knew when I left there that little boy was only minutes away from what was going to be a terrible tragedy. They had to make a difficult decision," O'Connor said.
Her video ignited a firestorm of criticism: part aimed at the zoo for making the decision to kill the gorilla, and part targeting the parent whose child was able to get into the ape's enclosure in the first place.
O'Connor has a message in response to everyone sharing their opinions over the death of the gorilla and role of the boy's mother.
"This was not in my opinion a neglectful mom," O'Connor said. "This was a mom getting ready to leave an exhibit with her other children and she had an adventurous 4 year old boy. They can have opinions about zoos and mothers, and protection and everything but they don’t know what went down that day."
