14 DAY TRIAL // This past Friday, a 41-year-old female elephant living in captivity at Dickerson Park Zoo in Missouri crushed a 62-year-old keeper named John Phillip Bradford. As reported at that time, the man died on the spot.
In the aftermath of this incident, PETA urges that Dickerson Park Zoo immediately shut down its elephant exhibit and send both Patience, the female elephant that killed the keeper, and three other elephants now living at this facility to a sanctuary.
“It's no surprise that the elephant, Patience, lashed out after years of stress-inducing, unnatural imprisonment. Patience had been taken from her family when she was captured from the wild. She was shipped to the U.S. and then moved from zoo to zoo,” the organization writes in a blogpost.
“Bradford's death was wholly preventable, had the zoo left Patience with her herd as nature intended,” it adds.
PETA is asking that the USDA and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigate both the circumstances of John's death and the conditions in which elephants are forced to live at this facility, and see to it that the animals are taken off public display and shipped to a sanctuary as soon as possible.