Woman Who Filmed Gorilla Incident Says Boy Was 'Only Minutes' From Death

The woman who videotaped Harambe the gorilla when a toddler fell into his enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo came out to say what happened at the zoo was no one's fault.

Social media has been ablaze for a week with people blaming the zoo for shooting the gorilla or the parents for not keeping a close enough eye on their toddler.

But Kim O'Connor, who was actually there, explained,

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.

She added,

[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.

Gorillas are extremely powerful and dangerous animals. One expert explained a gorilla has the strength of roughly 10 people and can be easily agitated. In the end, it appears the zoo's reasoning was no more complicated than the fact it just wasn't willing to risk the child's life.

O'Connor also doesn't blame the mother, who, she said, kept warning her son not to go in.

Now, of course, how a toddler could break into a gorilla enclosure seems pretty crazy to me. This seems like the real issue.

I mean, toddlers can't even poop in toilets correctly. They should not be able to sneak into gorilla habitats at the zoo. As far as I know, this toddler was not Tom Cruise, and the Cincinnati Zoo was not the CIA headquarters.

Citations: Woman who recorded gorilla incident says toddler 'only had minutes left' (USA Today), I Used to Work as a Zookeeper. Here's What We're Missing About the Death of Harambe. (Slate)