Shamu Kills Trainer at Sea World (VIDEO)

By Amanda Pendolino on February 25th, 2010

A killer whale has attacked and killed a trainer at Sea World in Florida, as the unsuspecting audience watched in horror. According to CBS News, Dawn Brancheau was one of the park’s most experienced trainers (only half of Sea World’s 48 trainers are permitted to work with the killer whale). But during a show at Shamu Stadium yesterday, Tillikum, a 12,000-pound orca nicknamed “Tilly,” pulled her into the water by her ponytail and thrashed her around before drowning her. Take a look at the CBS video:

Reports that Tilikum had been acting strangely leading up to Wednesday’s tragedy were dismissed by SeaWorld Orlando’s curator for animal behavior, Chuck Tompkins, who said the whale had been very cooperative and at the time he dragged Brancheau into the water, she was rewarding him for how well he had performed that day. “There wasn’t anything to indicate to us that there was a problem,” Tompkins said. “We were very careful with how we worked with him.”

However, Tilly has a history of violence. The whale, along with two female killer whales, drowned trainer Keltie Byrne in 1991 at a British Columbia park. Then in 1999, Tilikum killed a man who had sneaked into the SeaWorld tank after hours to swim with whales. “Tilikum is a killer,” said Russ Rector, an animal rights activisit. “If this had been a dog that killed Keltie Byrne, it would have been put down.”