An elderly American woman was killed in Zambia after an elephant charged at a vehicle carrying tourists in Kafue National Park. <\/p>\n
Another woman was injured and was taken to a medical facility in South Africa following the incident, which took place on Saturday, the conservation and hospitality company Wilderness, which was running the trip, said in a statement published Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Four other people also suffered minor injuries. <\/p>\n
Wilderness Chief Executive Officer Keith Vincent said the vehicle, which was carrying six guests and a guide, was \u201cunexpectedly charged\u201d by a bull elephant during the excursion to view wildlife, known as a game drive. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur guides are all extremely well trained and experienced, but sadly in this instance the terrain and vegetation was such that the guide\u2019s route became blocked and he could not move the vehicle out of harm\u2019s way quickly enough,\u201d Vincent said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a tragic event and we extend our deepest condolences to the family of the guest who died,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are also, naturally, supporting those guests and the guide involved in this distressing incident,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
A helicopter was dispatched to the scene and authorities are investigating. <\/p>\n
The\u00a0deceased woman has since been named as 79-year-old Gail Mattson by her family, correcting the age initially cited by Wilderness. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe was loved by everyone, and she was the center of attention,\u201d Vetter said. \u201cI mean she was 79\u00a0years old\u00a0and wanted to spend a month in Africa. She would be the first to understand this could happen. Everyone wants to blame the elephant and driver but no, it was a freak accident.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mattson\u2019s daughter, Rona Wells, also posted about her passing on Facebook and called the trip a \u201cdream adventure\u201d for her mother. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe would like to share some amazing pictures of our wonderful Mom\u2019s trip to South Africa with her friends and family. Sadly, she lost her life in a tragic accident while on her dream adventure,\u201d Wells said. <\/p>\n
Zambia is popular with safari travelers thanks to a number of national parks and the quality of its guides. <\/p>\n
Kafue is the country\u2019s largest national park and is home to more than 200 animal species. It is known for lion and leopard sightings as well as an incredible diversity of antelope species, many of which are rarely seen elsewhere. <\/p>\n
This is not the first time an American tourist has died at the park. In September 2016, Bianca Rudolph was found dead in her hunting cabin after a fatal shotgun blast. Her husband, Lawrence Rudolph, was sentenced last year to life in prison for her killing. <\/p>\n\n
An elderly American woman was killed in Zambia after an elephant charged at a vehicle carrying tourists in Kafue National Park. Another woman was injured and was taken to a medical facility in South Africa following the incident, which took place on Saturday, the conservation and hospitality company Wilderness, which was running the trip, said <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17609","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}