14 DAY TRIAL // The news just broke that, only recently, a 33-ton tank found at the entrance of Shanghai's Orient Shopping Center shattered and spilled both water and sharks within this Chinese Mall.
For the time being, the accident's cause remains unknown, yet many suspect that it was a sudden drop in local temperatures which caused the glass tank to break into numerous bits and pieces.
An ongoing investigation is expected to shed light on what caused the aquarium to break as soon as possible.
Seeing how the shark tank's shattering took them by surprise, neither mall customers nor shop assistants and security staff managed to shelter themselves from the torrent of water and the pieces of broken glass.
Thus, a total of 15 people were injured, and most of them needed medical attention as a result of the deep cuts and the severe bruising they sustained, Daily Mail reports.
As a spokesperson for the local police put it, “There were lots of injuries caused by flying glass, some of them serious because the glass was too thick. We are investigating what caused this.”
Conservationists and animal rights activists will not be happy to hear this, yet it seems that three lemon sharks also died as a result of this accident. Unfortunately, dozens of turtles and numerous smaller fish were also killed.
Interestingly enough, this tank only made its debut roughly two years ago, yet this is the second time when some of the animals housed in it pass away as a result of what some would label as human negligence.
More precisely, it was back in June when one of the tank's water pipes ruptured, causing two sharks to die.
For the time being, the Shopping Center's management team settled for pointing out that they had no intentions of building a new aquarium, neither in the near nor in the distant future.
Footage of the accident is made available to you in the video below.
