Horrifying Accidents: When visitors end up inside zoo enclosures

Incidents of humans entering enclosures or animals escaping are rare, but can have tragic outcomes

A 3-year-old boy's breach of a gorilla exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo, leading authorities to fatally shoot the gorilla to protect the child, has focused attention on zoo enclosures and security. Incidents of humans entering enclosures or animals escaping are rare, but can have tragic outcomes:

August 1986

A 5-year-old boy lifted up to a wall by his father for a better view of some gorillas falls 20 feet into a pit at a British zoo on the English Channel island of Jersey, suffering a broken arm and head injuries.

The gorillas crowd in to watch as one, their patriarch, strokes the boy, who regains consciousness and cries out in fear, scaring away the gorillas. Rescuers then haul him up on a stretcher.

April 1994

An 8-year-old boy wanders into an off-limits area and is attacked when a cheetah scales a fence of a holding pen at the zoo in Jackson, Mississippi, nipping and scratching the child before taking off with his baseball cap. The boy suffers cuts and bruises. The cat is sedated by zookeepers within minutes.

August 1996:

A 3-year-old boy climbs a 3-foot railing and falls 18 feet onto concrete in the primate exhibit at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo and is picked up by an 8-year-old motherly gorilla, who carries him in her arms to a gate where zookeepers could get him.

Binti Jua, an 8-year-old female gorilla, carries an injured 3-year-old boy. - AP file photo

Keepers spray water at other gorillas in the exhibit to keep them away from the boy, who suffers only minor head injuries and scrapes.

A 2-year-old boy is mauled and dies after lunging from his mother's grasp and falling about 10 feet from atop a wooden railing into an exhibit of African painted dogs at the Pittsburgh zoo.