Jumbo tramples trainer to death
2006-03-06 19:06
Johannesburg - A Zimbabwean elephant trainer has died after being trampled by an elephant at a safari camp near the Kruger National Park on Monday morning.
Superintendent Moatshe Ngoepe of Mopane police in Limpopo said the trainer had been trying to herd an elephant that had strayed from a herd back towards the others when it attacked him at the camp in Hoedspruit.
He died on arrival at the nearby Drakensig Military Hospital.
A staffer at the Jabulani Camp said no one would comment.
Ngoepe said the man's next-of-kin were still being traced and his name could not be released yet.
African elephant safaris have become more popular in the last 20 years and also are done in Zimbabwe and Zambia.
African elephants are considered more difficult to domesticate than their more-docile Asian counterparts, which have been used for centuries in India and other Asian countries for heavy labour.
The domestication of African elephants was pioneered at Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, near that country's border with Sudan, during Belgian colonial days.
- SAPA