Video Before Killer Whale Attack

Trainer Dawn Brancheau was taped moments before her death in a video taken by a SeaWorld visitor. SeaWorld will allow the whale who killed her to perform in shows. Mark Strassmann reports.

April 28, 2010

SeaWorld Whale's Killer Past No Secret to Staff

(CBS/ AP) Updated at 6:05 p.m. ET

A killer whale's history of harming people was known among SeaWorld employees when the whale killed a trainer in Orlando two months ago, according to a police report released Wednesday.

The whale named Tilikum dragged trainer Dawn Brancheau underwater Feb. 24, thrashing her body with such force that her hair and scalp had to be retrieved separately from the bottom of a pool after other SeaWorld employees recovered her body.

"Tilikum's past history is that when he obtains a person, he does not let them go," are the words one detective used to paraphrase part of an interview with Laura Surovik, an assistant curator of animal training at Sea World.

The incident in Orlando marked the third time Tilikum had been involved in a human death. Tilikum was one of three orcas blamed for killing a trainer in 1991 after the woman lost her balance and fell in the pool at Sealand of the Pacific near Victoria, British Columbia. Tilikum also was also involved in a 1999 death, when the body of a man who had sneaked by SeaWorld Orlando security was found draped over him.

A spotter who worked with Brancheau, Lynne Schaber, told a detective she "knew Dawn Brancheau was in trouble" when she saw the trainer pulled into the water "because Tilikum is a 'possessive' animal," the detective wrote. "He normally keeps things that he has and will not release them," the detective wrote.

Craig Thomas, a SeaWorld animal trainer who worked with Tilikum in the mid-'90s and started working with him again in 2008, told a detective that "because of an incident in Canada … there has never been any intention by any trainers of getting in the water with Tilikum."

"He has been deemed to have tendencies that make him unsafe," the detective wrote Thomas told him.

Jan Topoleski, another SeaWorld trainer, told police "no one ever goes in the pool with Tilikum because of his past history," a detective wrote.

While trainers tried to retrieve Brancheau's body from the whale, "Tilikum became agitated and he would not allow anyone near her," the detective noted Topoleski said.

Some tourists gathered in an underwater viewing area saw the brutal way Tilikum treated Brancheau's body.

Jessica Wilder, a tourist from Vermont, told a detective she saw Brancheau in the water "scrambling" to get out before Tilikum "impacted her squarely in the chest" and loop back around to come toward Brancheau with his mouth open.

Susanne DeWit, a tourist from the Netherlands, saw Tilikum swim by with Brancheau's body in his mouth, holding her by the shoulder and neck, according to the report.

"Tilikum was shaking the trainer and moving extremely fast," a detective wrote DeWit said she saw before SeaWorld employees moved the group out of the viewing area.

Police viewed security video from a camera in the underwater viewing area, according to the report. The footage showed Brancheau swimming underneath Tilikum before she made two attempts to swim to the surface of the pool. Each time the whale struck Brancheau back. Within 5 minutes of when the camera recorded a splash in the pool, Brancheau's body appeared to be lifeless in the whale's mouth.




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