Authorities did not say whether anyone else was injured or what led to the elephants’ aggression.
In a horrific incident, a U.S. tourist from New Mexico was killed by an elephant in Zambia on Wednesday after it attacked her vehicle during a safari drive. Officials said the elephant pulled Juliana Gle Tourneau, 64, from the vehicle and trampled her. metro reported. The incident occurred near the Maramba Cultural Bridge in Livingstone when the group had to stop due to a herd of elephants.
She was taken to a clinic in Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. According to the police report, her injuries included deep wounds to her right shoulder blade and forehead, a broken left ankle and a slight dent in her chest.
Ms Tourneau died at around 5.50pm “after she was pushed out of a parked vehicle that had stopped due to traffic caused by elephants around the Maramba Cultural Bridge,” Southern Province Police Commissioner Auxensio Daka told Zambian broadcaster. ZNBC on Friday.
Officials did not say whether anyone else was injured or what caused the elephant’s aggressiveness.
This tragic event is the second fatal elephant attack on a U.S. tourist in Zambia this year. In March, Gail Mattson, a 79-year-old woman from Minnesota, was killed in a similar incident while on safari in Zambia’s Kafue National Park. An elephant attacked and overturned the truck, resulting in her death and five other injuries.
In response to these incidents, Zambian authorities have urged tourists to exercise extreme caution when viewing wildlife. Similar concerns have been raised in neighboring countries such as Zimbabwe and Botswana, which have also reported rising elephant populations and fatal attacks in recent years.
Experts say deaths are rare in encounters with elephants. “This is a freak accident. It’s probably just a chain of unfortunate circumstances that led to this,” Nikhil Advani, executive director of the World Wildlife Fund, a nonprofit organization that works to protect the environment and species, told the New York Times.
