No charges will be filed after a young boy crawled over a barrier at the Cincinnati Zoo and fell into an enclosure with a gorilla, Hamilton County, Ohio, prosecuting attorney Joseph Deters said today, explaining, "this could happen to even the most attentive parent."
Deters said an investigation by the Cincinnati Police Department determined that "none of the witnesses interviewed described the [boy's] mother as anything but attentive to her children. Our information is that the mother turned away for a few seconds to attend to another one of her young children and that is when the 3-year-old was able to climb into the gorilla enclosure."
He added: "I am very sorry about the loss of this gorilla, but nothing about this situation rises to the level of a criminal charge."
Video shows the 450-pound gorilla, named Harambe, dragging the small boy through water in the enclosure on May 28. The boy was in the enclosure for 10 minutes before the gorilla was shot in the head and killed by zoo staff. The boy was taken to Cincinnati Children's Hospital and released without life-threatening injuries.
Deters said the boy suffered only minor scrapes and bruises. "I don't know how he wasn't hurt," he said.
Bye.
