SeaWorld trainer killed by whale

STAFF REPORT

A killer whale killed a trainer Wednesday afternoon at SeaWorld's Shamu Stadium in Orlando, Florida.

The 40-year-old woman, identified by sheriff's spokesman Jim Solomons as Dawn Brancheau, was in the whale holding area about 2 p.m. when "she apparently slipped or fell into the tank and was fatally injured by one of the whales," he said.

But a witness told WKMG-TV that the whale named Tillikum approached the glass side of the 35-foot-deep tank at Shamu Stadium, jumped up and grabbed the trainer by the waist, shaking her so violently that her shoe came off.

"One of our most experienced animal trainers drowned" in the accident, said Dan Brown, vice president and general manager of SeaWorld Orlando. He said an investigation will be carried out.

"We'll make our findings known in due course," he said. "We've never in the history of our parks experienced an incident like this. All standard operating procedures will be reviewed."

"Please bear with us; we've just lost a member of our family," he said.

The incident occurred after a show called "Dine with Shamu," said Paula Gillespie, who attended with her daughter.

"During the show everything was perfectly fine," she said.

Afterward, "we went down to look at his full body underneath the isolation tank," she said. "Everything seemed calm and OK. The trainer was laying down on him and kissing his nose and rubbing him."

But the scene changed quickly, she said.

"Within five minutes, she was down in the tank and we saw all the thrashing and the bubbles and him pushing her with his nose," she said. "It was just so, so traumatic."

Within moments, sirens went off and SeaWorld employees asked her to leave the building, she said.

In 1999, Tillikum was blamed for the death of a 27-year-old man whose body was found floating on his back in a tank at SeaWorld, the apparent victim of a whale's "horseplay," authorities said then.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office said the man apparently hid in the park until after it closed and then climbed into the tank.

The 11,000-pound, 22-foot-long whale was "not accustomed to people being in his tank" and "wouldn't have realized he was dealing with a very fragile human being," Solomons said at the time.

"He may have been a victim of what a whale would call horseplay, just playing around," Solomons said.