SeaWorld trainer’s final moments alive before she was snatched by killer whale Tilikum and eaten
The final moments of a SeaWorld trainer before she was killed by an orca showed her performing a show with the animal.
On 24 February, 2010, Dawn Brancheau was working on a 'Dine with Shamu' experience at SeaWorld Orlando, where guests ate their food while watching killer whales perform.
At the event, the trainer was playing with an orca called Tilikum, and was rubbing the whale's head while lying beside the tank before she was pulled into the water.
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Tilikum pulled Dawn underneath the water and drowned her, with employees trying and failing to distract the killer whale by throwing nets and food into the water.
It was 45 minutes before the orca released Brancheau's body, by which time SeaWorld staff had been able to coax the killer whale into a smaller tank of water.
Brancheau had died from drowning and blunt force trauma.
According to her autopsy report, her spinal cord had been severed, and she had suffered fractures to her jawbone, ribs and vertebrae, while her scalp had also been torn from her head.
She had worked with orcas for 15 years at the Orlando tourist attraction and 'built a great relationship' with Tilikum, though that didn't avert the disaster which SeaWorld viewers witnessed on the day.
Dawn's death was not the first fatality that the same orca had been involved with.
At time of writing, four people have died in interactions with orcas kept in captivity, and Tilikum has been involved in three out of those four.
On 20 February, 1991, 20-year-old student Keltie Lee Byrne died while working at Sealand of the Pacific.
She had slipped and fallen into the whale pool, where one of the whales seized her foot and dragged her underwater.
Tilikum was among the killer whales in the pool, and Byrne's death was ruled as an accident.
The orcas involved were sold to SeaWorld, and Tilikum ended up in Orlando where in 1999 he was involved in the death of 27-year-old Daniel P. Dukes.
He had hidden inside SeaWorld on the night on 6 July and got inside the whale pool, he was found dead in the water by staff the next morning.
Following Dawn's death, Tilikum continued to perform at SeaWorld with safety restrictions in place until he died in 2017 from a bacterial infection.
The orca was also the subject of documentary film Blackfish, which highlighted the controversy over keeping killer whales in captivity.
Joe Harker