Zoo officials said the gorilla called Koga took advantage of an unlocked cage door and slipped out into an area used by zoo personnel but closed to the public. A female keeper who has cared for Koga since he arrived in Buffalo in 2007 was bitten on her hand and calf.
Police sent in a SWAT team to secure the area while a vet used a handheld blow pipe to sedate Koga through a porthole and then he was dragged back to his cage by zoo staff. Visitors were moved indoors during the 45-minute ordeal.
“That was the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my career,” said SWAT team captain Mark Maraschiello. “It’s a 400-pound animal that’s capable of who knows what. He could rip your arm out of its socket.”
A zoo official said the keeper’s injuries were not serious and the bite was an act of excitement rather than aggression. “He was probably just as surprised coming face to face with her as she was with him,” the zoo’s president Donna Fernandes said.
Koga is a West Lowland gorilla that come from West Africa and the Congo River Basin. He was born at New York’s Bronx Zoo and was transferred in 1994 to the Memphis Zoo before landing in Buffalo. Fernandes said he has no history of unusual aggression.
