A killer whale with a history of killing its trainers struck again at SeaWorld on Wednesday, apparently killing one of its handlers during a live show while an audience looked on in disbelief.

An official says 40-year-old Dawn Brancheau was the trainer killed during the Dining with Shamu event.

A witness, Victoria Biniak said that the trainer had just finished explaining to the audience the show they were about to see. Unfortunately, no one was prepared for what happened next.

The whale apparently came out of the water, snatching up the woman in her jaws and "thrashed her all around," as a horrified audience watched helplessly.
"He was thrashing her around pretty good," Biniak said. "It was violent."

SeaWorld officials said the trainer was one of the park's most experienced and that she slipped in the tank. Still, other witnesses claim the whale lept out of the water, grabbed the woman's arm and then drug her underwater.

The whale in question's real name is Tillikum, nicknamed "Tilly," and he isn't the nicest mammal in the pod. According to the Orlando Sentinel, whale was blamed for the drowning of one of his trainers in 1991 during a performance on in British Columbia. He was sold to SeaWorld the next year.

In 1999, the 5-ton orca was found with the dead body of a naked homeless man on his back.

Daniel Dukes, 27, reportedly made his way past security at SeaWorld, remaining in the park after it had closed. Wearing only his underwear, Dukes either jumped, fell or was pulled into the frigid water of Tilikum's huge tank.

An autopsy ruled that he died of hypothermia in the 50-degree water. Dukes' parents filed a lawsuit against the park later that year but later withdrew it.

There have been several previous attacks on whale trainers at SeaWorld parks.

In Nov. 2006, trainer Kenneth Peters, 39, was bitten and held underwater several times by a 7,000-pound killer whale during a
show at SeaWorld's San Diego park. He escaped with a broken foot.

The 17-foot-long orca who attacked him was the dominant female of SeaWorld San Diego's seven killer whales. She had attacked Peters two other times, in 1993 and 1999.

In 2004, another whale at the company's San Antonio park tried to hit one of the trainers and attempted to bite him. He also
escaped.

In December, a whale drowned a trainer at a Spanish zoo.









now my comment to you is... anything with a first name of "KILLER"... STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM IT! you know, seaworld may indeed be one of the ultimate human aquaria, but i do truely believe that some critters shouldnt be kept in captivity... like friggin whales... because they will kill ya!

i couldnt agree more win! no doubt its great for the public to look at, but these events just go to show that mayeb people shouldnt be in the tanks with them at the very least!

id love to see them in the wild, one of my dreams, cant say watchign a whale training being bitten and drown is on my list tho!

I think it works the same as keeping an Oscar all cramped up in a small tank.
Whales are way to large to house them properly and they are very intelligent
so you know boredom and deppression can affect them. They shouldn't be kept in
captivity.

well...that is life... human take advantage of being superior with whales
or any other animals, nature just want to shows us that we shouldn't be
doing that...however, no matter how many people died that way, we never learned.

I have just been out this morning and this was being discussed on one of the radio programs. Some people are calling for the whale to be destroyed in the same way a dog would be if it killed somebody. However, I'm afraid my sympathy goes out to the whale and not any of the people that it killed. That may seem a little harsh but if you play with fire, you must expect to get burnt occasionally. These type of whales are not exactly known to be maneaters, unless your name is Richard Harris of course . But there are still dangerous and will always be temperamental if kept in captivity. It always amazes me that these so-called experts think it's safe to stick their heads in the mouths lions, crocodiles and no doubt killer whales, they should accept the consequences when they inevitably do happen.

Very big X2 with olf. couldn't have put it better myself. my wife said last night, "its killed people before" i said same as you ofl. what the bloody hell do they expect. its a killer whale. i don't care if it meant to kill the woman or if it was a accident, the outcome is the same. the whale didn't ask to be put in the tank, it didn't want to do tricks so its not to blame. if it had killed me I would still have the same attitude. if i got eaten by a shark cos I went into the sea to see them, its me to blame.

I've seen Orcas in the wild when I lived in Sitka, AK, and I've been to Sea World in CA. It amazed me that they kept them in tanks the sizes of large swimming pools. To watch what those animals are capable of doing in the ocean is friggin amazing. Seeing them cramped up in what equates to be a 10gl tank is disgusting. I'm not surprised that he killed another trainer. He's probably pissed off, bored, and depressed about being forced (they claim they don't force the animals, but I call BS) to do stupid animal tricks for the masses who know nothing of the animals except, "Oh look what that pretty fishy can do! It can splash us all, isn't that funny?"

Do you know that the male Orca's dorsal fin should stand about 6-7ft tall, and that when kept in captivity it folds over. They don't know why. I'll tell you why, because they'd rather go back to the ocean, duh. Why do we take an intelligent animal that can recognize it's own family members, even after 20 years in captivity, and stick it in a fish bowl for the world to see? Because man is heartless and narcissistic.

At least our local aquarium was smart enough to try and rehabilitate a captive Orca. Remember Keiko from Free Willy? They "rescued" him from a zoo in Mexico, shipped him to the Newport Aquarium, built him a 1 million gallon tank and it still wasn't good enough. They released him to an inlet in Iceland where he lived for only a couple more years because he couldn't make it in the wild anymore. He was used to being hand fed, couldn't hunt, and was so out of shape and unhealthy from being cramped into a fishbowl, that he couldn't swim with his pod anymore either. They wouldn't accept him back.

Can you tell I dislike Sea World? I'm all for studies and conservation, and education. Sea World does a lot of that. But there are some animals on this planet that were never meant to be behind bars, or stuck in fish tanks. Orcas are number one on that list IMO.

Jenni wrote:
[quote]I've seen Orcas in the wild when I lived in Sitka, AK,[quote] - very jealous jenni!

as i said before, if a whale needs to be in a tank due to not being able to survive in wild etc thats one thing but dont get in a pissing tank with it

reminds me of a quote i live my life by: U PLAY WITH FEATHERS, U GET YR ARSE TICKLED

it is very, very sad for the whale; ok - it's sad for the trainer and their loved ones as well.

it's hard call about whether or not the whale should be destroyed. on one hand, it maybe the more humane thing to do - the whale is obviously frustrated, bored and sick of being confined (like others said - like an oscar in a 10 gallon tank!). From what little I know about Orcas, they are highly social animals as well and need to be in a group to thrive. Is the whale suffering in his current situation and would be better off being "let go"? Rehabilitating it to live in the wild is pretty unlikely......

very, very sad - this story brings to light a lot of interesting questions about keeping wild animals in captivity.