What incident brought attention to the safety of people and zoo animals and also resulted in a gorilla being nominated for Speaker of the House?
Killing of Harambe On May 28, 2016, a three-year-old boy climbed into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden and was grabbed and dragged by Harambe, a 17-year-old Western lowland gorilla. Fearing for the boy's life, a zoo worker shot and killed Harambe. The incident was recorded on video and received broad international coverage and commentary, including controversy over the choice to kill Harambe. A number of primatologists and conservationists wrote later that the zoo had no other choice under the circumstances, and that it highlighted the danger of zoo animals in close proximity to humans and the need for better standards of care.
Lorenzo Collins Lorenzo Collins (c. 1972 – February 28, 1997) was an African-American man with a history of mental illness who was shot by Cincinnati police while threatening officers with a brick, subsequently dying from his injuries five days later at age twenty-five. During the previous three months of his life Collins had been in and out of the Hamilton County mental health system. Many experts involved in the case believed that Collins, who was a violent psychotic, should never have been released from treatment to begin with. This case predated the 2001 Cincinnati riots by more than four years. The public criticism of the event was very heated, with one local community leader, Reverend James W. Jones, stating, "They let us blow off steam and then it's back to business as usual. This time the black community should shut this town down. Hell, it's time we stopped playing games." The police were not prosecuted for their actions.