Elephant attack on vehicle

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SammyA
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Re: alleged elephant attack on vehicle

Post by SammyA »

I think that having to watch a video and then answer a few questions correctly before you could be let would be a good idea, but it would have to be everyone - not just the foreign tourists but also the local who lives 5 minutes from the nearest gate.

I don't think that people who push their luck with these animals think they are being stupid or that the animals are annoyed and might object, I think that they just don't think. We live in a 'safe' world where we don't need to worry about lions and elephants (some of you have to worry about much scarier things - if you live in Jo'burg!) and I think that unless you are in constant contact with animals you loose that ability to read them. I've seen an intelligent person give a dog chew to their three year old (who was afraid of dogs) to give to a dog - so he could be 'friends' with it, never mind that the dog didn't really like kids too close, or was possessive over his food. She really didn't see that the dog was uncomfortable, didn't notice that he went still, stiffened and stared at the child, the first thing she noticed was the low grumble (which was just before I swooped in and shifted the kid). If most people can't read the domestic pets they live with everyday what hope is there that they will be able to read a wild animal they see for a few minutes once in a blue moon?

In the same way I don't think that the parents of those kids in the car by the lions thought at all, look at how quietly he lay there surely he couldn't be getting agitated. I'm sure that they honestly didn't see him stiffen and his tail begin to twitch, or if they did they didn't recognise them as warning signals, they didn't see anything until he 'suddenly attacked out of the blue'. Maybe the ele people were the same 'wow look how close we are to this ele, oh look he's turning round to look at us' I'm sure they didn't see that him 'turning round to look' was his way of giving them a final warning.

Remember that we all take an interest in animals therefore we all have at least a basic understanding of how an animal acts, thinks and feels, we can see that these animals (the ele and the lion) were very agitated and annoyed by the actions of the people around them. If the people doing these things aren't the sort of people who take a real interest in the animals, they just want to tick a box on their South African holiday or occupy the kids for a day, they might have never been told/educated about the correct behaviour around the animals, warning signs etc (and as they say 'common sense isn't all that common anymore'). A leaflet handed to you as you enter the gate might give you all the information but I doubt most people read it, make everyone watch a video and answer questions then hopefully something might stick and at least one of the people in the car might remember if they find themselves in that situation. -O-


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Re: alleged elephant attack on vehicle

Post by Lisbeth »

Right Sammy \O


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Re: alleged elephant attack on vehicle

Post by Richprins »

Good post, okie!

The very best thing SANParks can do is to cut down on the number of visitors to the Park! Instead of squeezing more and more in every year, while elephant are overbreeding!

As some have said, this sort of thing will just happen more and more...the last two years have seen a big rise in this sort of incident... 0*\


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Re: alleged elephant attack on vehicle

Post by RobertT »

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... world.html

Man, can you believe their story, it is so different to what video is showing, then they want to make out the people who took the video are the villains. Why also wait so long to tell story, even when SANParks who did all in their power to help them. Bet they were waiting for highest bidder for story. O/ O/ O/


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Re: alleged elephant attack on vehicle

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No comments!


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Re: alleged elephant attack on vehicle

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There’s never a good time to accidentally slip the car into first gear when you’re trying to find reverse, but to do so when there’s a thumping great bull elephant with 6ft-long tusks charging towards you must be, well … terrifying.

Just ask Sarah Brooks, a 30-year-old science teacher from Lincolnshire who was on a game drive in a hired Volkswagen in South Africa’s Kruger National Park with her fiancé, 32-year-old Jans de Klerk, when she did just that.

‘It was horrendous,’ she says. ‘The elephant was coming towards us, so I swung round to do a three-point turn but couldn’t get it into reverse. I completely freaked.

‘I wasn’t used to the car. The gears were on a different side. We kept trickling forwards. Jans said: “What are you doing?”

‘Then we panicked. I stopped the car and we said: “Right, let’s keep as still as we possibly can.” I have no idea why, but I turned the ignition off.

‘We looked at the floor. The elephant was right in front of us but we weren’t looking at him. All we could see was his legs, anyway. I remember asking: “Has he gone? Has he gone?” That’s when he bashed into us. I froze, just like a rabbit in headlights.

‘The next thing I heard was Jans screaming at me: “Drive! Drive!” I somehow managed to turn the engine on, Jans found reverse, but just as I got it going, the elephant tipped us up. Then he crushed the undercarriage by ramming it with his head, and the key snapped out of the ignition.

‘I remember thinking, “We’re never going to be able to drive away now” — and the next thing I knew we were rolling.’ Jans reaches for her hand.

‘At that moment, your life flashes through your head. I thought, “We’ve only been together a year-and-a-half, life’s good. Why now? Why the hell now? It just isn’t fair.” I didn’t know if either of us would live.’

Indeed, it’s a miracle of sorts that they’ve survived. Jans says he ‘shot up a prayer that day, saying: ‘Please do not let this happen.’

Last Sunday, he went to church for the first time in many years to say thank you. Sarah was unable to join him. Her pelvis is fractured in four places and there’s a ten-inch scar beneath her right buttock.



She will be on crutches for 12 weeks but, in truth, she’s lucky to be walking at all. In fact, make that lucky, full stop. The attack, which was filmed by tourists following in a car behind and posted on the internet, made headlines worldwide — with many criticising Sarah and Jans for their apparent foolishness in driving so close to such a massive beast.

The footage is the stuff of horror movies. The enraged elephant continued to ram them at least five times, gouging Sarah’s thigh through the bodywork with its tusk and flinging the car 40 metres.

While Sarah is now watching the footage from the safety of the terraced home she shares with Jans in Spalding, Lincs, she still suffers nightmares and anxiety attacks.

‘Each time we rolled, I kept thinking, “I’m still alive”, because on one of the first strikes his tusk went through my hair and missed my head by about this much.’ She demonstrates a fraction of an inch with her thumb and finger.

‘The next time he gored a hole through the car I thought, “That’s twice he’s missed me”. I don’t know how many times he’d hit the car when I felt a sharp burning and a tusk went through my thigh. It hurt, but the adrenaline masked the pain and I was happy to be alive, thinking, “I’m still here. I’m still not dying.”’


Sarah says: 'The elephant was coming towards us, so I swung round to do a three-point turn but couldn¿t get it into reverse. I completely freaked'


Sarah says: 'The elephant was coming towards us, so I swung round to do a three-point turn but couldn¿t get it into reverse. I completely freaked'
Sarah, from Lincolnshire, will be on crutches for 12 weeks but, in truth, she's lucky to be walking at all


Sarah, from Lincolnshire, will be on crutches for 12 weeks but, in truth, she's lucky to be walking at all

She turns to Jans. ‘You were trying to pull me but we’d got our seatbelts on and you couldn’t get me to your side. I thought: “He’s going to get my middle. If he gets my middle, I’m going to be gone.”

‘Every time the car stopped rolling as the elephant went back to charge again, we collected ourselves and said to each other: “I love you, are you OK?” This time I was shouting: “He’s got me! He’s going to come back and get me again.” That’s when you managed to pull me onto your side.’
Sarah, who is visibly upset, pauses the video. Jans strokes her hand.

‘I wish I could have taken the brunt of it and not Sarah,’ he says.

Astonishingly, Jans only received a single, superficial scratch, which didn’t even require a plaster.

Sarah was airlifted to hospital and remained in a critical condition for four days. She has been told she will no longer be able to have children naturally owing to the pelvic injuries she sustained.

‘When the doctor told me that, my heart dropped into my stomach,’ she says. ‘That’s what we’d been planning.’

She sighs. ‘It could have been much, much worse. Once Jans pulled me to his side, I sat on his knee holding him. The elephant walked to the back of the car and pushed us. The front of the car was in a tree and I thought he was going to crush us.

‘But then he just walked off . . .

‘I was in more of a panic afterwards. We thought the car that was behind us would still be there, but it was gone.’

Hang on, Sarah. Rewind. The tourists who stayed to video the entire attack just drove off without helping you?

She nods, looking totally bewildered. ‘That’s the thing that’s upset me more than anything. They said they thought we were dead, and told us later they didn’t have any space in the car.’



She shakes her head. ‘We could have sat on their laps …

‘The park ranger wouldn’t talk to them when they went to show him the video. He said: “What the hell were you doing? Why didn’t you help them?”

‘I was bleeding, the windscreen was smashed and we’d no protection. Any animal could have come to get us.’

Sarah was ghostly white, shaking and bleeding profusely. Jan frantically searched for his phone. ‘I knew I needed to get help, but the car that had been behind us was on the horizon. I was swearing at them, shouting: “Where the hell have you gone!?”

‘My phone was damaged but I managed to ring my brother Will in Cape Town. I said: “We’ve been attacked by an elephant in Kruger National Park.” He said: “Where are you?’ — so I described it to him. Luckily, I said we were on a road with a waterhole. In fact, it was called Waterhole Road. Then my phone conked out.

‘We were in a panic. I didn’t know if he really knew where we were. It was 4pm. I was frightened the sun was going to go down, we were going to be left and Sarah was going to bleed to death. The area of the park we were in wasn’t very busy.’

It was 25 minutes until they saw another vehicle. Jans, his shirt soaked in Sarah’s blood, waved the car down. It was a family-of-three.

Jans simply said: ‘Thank God.’

Born in South Africa, he grew up near the Kruger Park, which he first visited as a five-year-old. He knew only too well the perilous situation they faced if help hadn’t come.

The passers-by helped to lift Sarah from the car and rehydrated her with sugar water.





Meanwhile, Jans’ brother had managed to alert park rangers and a helicopter arrived to airlift Sarah to hospital just as they were about to drive off. ‘They took me to a doctor, where I was patched up before being taken to a hospital to check for internal injuries.

‘In the back of the ambulance, I said to Jans: “I don’t want ever to spend another day apart from you.’ He said: “Marry me then?” I said: “Yes.” ’

Jans had in fact intended to propose to Sarah the following day, on New Year’s Eve, in a romantic setting on a mountain outside Pretoria where he’d grown up.

They’d been in South Africa for ten days, visiting Jans’ family for Christmas, when the attack happened. Jan says he knew when he first set eyes on Sarah that they’d spend their lives together.

A strikingly handsome couple, they’ve been inseparable since the day they met 14 months before in Spalding. Jans, who is a studying for a maths degree and works part-time in a hotel, says they share the same family values and a passion for the outdoors. ‘Sarah’s such a wonderful woman,’ he says.

‘There was nothing wrong with either of us before this happened. She’s the woman of my dreams.
‘The moment I met her I knew she’d be the mother of my children. To know it’s just not …’

Now it’s Sarah’s turn to console Jans. ‘These scars are going to heal, darling,’ she says.

On New Year’s Eve, they fell asleep together at 8pm in Sarah’s private hospital ward. Jans slept on the floor and stayed with her for the four days she remained in critical condition.

Sarah smiles: ‘He read me folk stories from a book we’d been given for Christmas. I had a drip, a catheter and I was black and blue. I didn’t feel very nice.’
Relentless: As Jans and the injured Sarah cower inside, the beast continues its attack on the car

She looks at him. ‘You washed my hair, picked a nice dress for me to wear every day and even helped me shave my legs because I couldn’t move.’ He drops a kiss on her head.

‘You’ve got to look after someone,’ he says. ‘For a little while, I blamed myself for the whole situation. I thought: “If I hadn’t met her …  if I hadn’t taken her out there … if I’d been driving …” I had been driving the whole holiday. It was only at lunchtime we decided Sarah was going to drive the last leg so I could take the binoculars and look at some game.’

There are, in truth, so many ifs and whys. Good and bad. ‘There are various things that could have happened,’ says Jans. ‘The petrol tank was nearly finished because we were going to fill up at the gates. If it hadn’t been, the car would probably have caught fire.

‘If we weren’t wearing seatbelts, we’d have been thrown from the car and we’ve been told the elephant would have trampled us.’ Sarah continues to have nightmares about that.

‘If there’s one thing I wish we’d done differently, it’s that we hadn’t turned down that road,’ says Jans.

‘We were on our way out and we thought, “Let’s go and see just a few more animals”. Sarah hadn’t seen a giraffe.’

But mostly, they both wish the group of tourists who filmed the gruesome attack had stayed to help them. Sarah and Jans are both decent people with a strong sense of right and wrong. The actions of
the young South Africans — who were university graduates in their 20s — have shaken their faith in human nature.

Two of them visited Sarah in hospital. She pleaded with them not to publish the video. As it was, they did. The heavily-edited version — which made them look at best daft, and at worst deliberately foolhardy — went viral within hours.

Soon, Sarah and Jans became victims of an internet hate campaign that included death threats once animal lovers learned the elephant had been shot.

‘We were 30 metres away from the elephant before it turned on us,’ says Sarah, and shows me the video they were taking at the time to verify this. ‘A park ranger came to see us the day after it happened. He said: “I’ve seen the video. You were unlucky. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

‘The elephant had a maggot-infested abscess and had wounds all over his chest from being in a fight with a bull earlier on in the day.

‘He was a very angry elephant. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

‘I asked: “Was it necessary to kill it?”

‘He said: “If we’d left him, he’d have done it to someone else.”

‘I cried. I was really sad. Then he told me he was yards from another car when they found him.’
Jans interrupts. ‘Those people who’ve sent death threats only saw dramatic clips from a video that makes it look like we drove up to the elephant and stopped. I pleaded with those people not to put the video on the internet.’
The footage is the stuff of horror movies. The enraged elephant continued to ram them at least five times, gouging Sarah's thigh through the bodywork with its tusk and flinging the car 40 metres


Sarah was unable to fly for ten days after two operations to clean the wound. She didn’t want her mother to see what she knew would be horrendous footage until she was safely home.

When the other tourists visited Sarah in hospital, Jans begged them to keep the video to themselves.

‘The guy gave me his word, but he also said: “One of the ladies in the car is selfish and I can’t vouch for her.” He said she’d already made enquiries about selling it.’

Sarah and Jans eventually arrived home on January 16, on a beautifully sunny day. Jans says: ‘I felt like the land was welcoming us home and there was this huge rainbow over our house.’

Tomorrow, Sarah is intending to accompany Jans to church. She, too, wants to give thanks for their survival. And to make sense, I wonder, of the inhumanity of an internet generation that videos an attack and dashes off to post it online, with no thought for the victims.


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Re: alleged elephant attack on vehicle

Post by Richprins »

This is typical British tabloid stuff, and they get money for it.

But it's more about the youngsters trying to redeem their reputation.

She should have stopped at saying she freaked out. Finally finding reverse with the aid of her SO is nonsense, part of the crap about being careful etc. :O^

Blaming the videographer behind them is a response to the "inconvenient truth" after the thing went to youtube/media...no money for the videographer there? :-?


The general gist is fine as to what happened, I think, and gives a clearer picture! \O

What sends alarm bells regarding this article is the alleged comments from "rangers"....doesn't sound right at all... :-?

0()


Thanks very much, Robert! \O


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Re: alleged elephant attack on vehicle

Post by nan »

"quote"
‘But then he just walked off . . .
‘I was in more of a panic afterwards. We thought the car that was behind us would still be there, but it was gone.’
Hang on, Sarah. Rewind. The tourists who stayed to video the entire attack just drove off without helping you?
She nods, looking totally bewildered. ‘That’s the thing that’s upset me more than anything. They said they thought we were dead, and told us later they didn’t have any space in the car.’"unquote"

they run to search help... without knowing how was the occupants :-? or...

I can't understand all... but it seems to me the brother (from Cape Town) was much more effective...

:-? they come from GB... also drive on the left side... also need the left hand

the rest is romance...
but an terrific "accident"


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Re: alleged elephant attack on vehicle

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nan wrote:
they come from GB... also drive on the left side... also need the left hand
Correct, nana! \O


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Re: alleged elephant attack on vehicle

Post by Lisbeth »

why did she have to swing around to put the car in gear? :-? Actually Nan has hit the nail on the head \O


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