WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT Dawn Brancheau, 40, was a seasoned SeaWorld trainer who had worked with killer whales for 15 years – but during a petting session, Tilikum grabbed her by the ponytail and dragged her into the pool
Nobody expected Dawn Brancheau – one of SeaWorld’s most seasoned trainers – would be savagely killed by the whale she’d worked with and adored.
Onlookers at the Dine with Shamu display could only watch in terror as Tilikum, the biggest bull orca in captivity, grabbed her lengthy ponytail in his jaws and pulled her into the tank during a contact session in February 2010.
She attempted to wrench it away, but at 126lbs, Dawn, 40, was no match for the 12,500lb, 22ft-long whale, who only tugged more forcefully.
Her workmates instantly began their emergency protocols, smacking the water as a signal to Tilikum to cease and lowering a weighted net to attempt separating the whale from the woman.
But he refused to respond. At one point, Dawn succeeded in breaking away and swimming to the surface. But Tilikum crashed into her, seized his jaws around her torso and shook her brutally.
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Onlooker Victoria Biniak told WKMG-TV how the creature, “took off really fast in the tank and he came back, shot up in the air, grabbed the trainer by the waist and started thrashing her around, and one of her shoes flew off”.
She said: “He was thrashing her around pretty good – it was violent.”
Even when staff succeeded in directing Tilikum to the medical lift and raising the floor, he refused to release Dawn. Trainers were compelled to force his jaws apart and drag their colleague free as her arm detached in his mouth.
She had been scalped and dismembered, and had nearly every bone in her body shattered before being drowned. Despite SeaWorld attributing the incident to “trainer error”, several former trainers have come forward claiming they believe Tilikum knew exactly what he was doing.
“He got her down and that was it – she wasn’t getting out,” former trainer Jonathan Smith revealed to Outside magazine.
“I truly believe that they are smart enough to detect and know what they are doing. He’s going to know she is trying to get to the surface.”
Former trainer Jeffrey Ventre agreed, adding: “If they let you out, it’s because they decide to. We don’t know for sure what motivated Tilikum. But there’s no doubt that he knew exactly what he was doing. He killed her.”
However, many were unaware that Tilikum had a history of violence. He’d been implicated in the 1991 death of a 20-year-old trainer at Sealand in Victoria, Canada before being sold to SeaWorld.
And in 1999, Daniel Dukes, 27, was discovered sprawled on Tilikum’s back, covered in bite marks and puncture wounds. Out of four known fatalities involving killer whales in captivity, Tilikum had been involved in three.
Experts who spoke in the 2013 documentary Blackfish suggested his capture and captivity had rendered the intelligent, sensitive creature ‘psychotic’ – claims SeaWorld has refuted.
He was just two years old when he was ripped away from his family off the coast of Iceland and taken to a concrete holding tank at Hafnarfjördur Marine Zoo near Reykjavík.
He reportedly spent nearly a year either swimming in circles or floating motionless on the surface before being transported to the dilapidated Sealand of the Pacific, a marine park just outside Victoria, on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island in 1984.
The documentary revealed how he was kept with two older female orcas named Haida II and Nootka IV who sought dominance, as females are at the top of the social structure in the wild.
For 14 hours a day, the mismatched trio were allegedly forced into a 26ft wide enclosed metal-sided pool known as the module, where the females scraped Tilikum with their teeth in the darkness.
He began suffering from stomach ulcers and was eventually isolated in a medical pool to protect him from the bloody attacks, it’s been claimed.
And on February 20 1991, the trio killed University of Victoria marine biology student and part-time trainer Keltie Byrne, 20, when she slipped and fell into the orca pool after a show.
Witnesses reported that one whale grabbed her in its mouth and dragged her around the pool underwater.
Terrified witnesses described how the champion swimmer screamed, “I don’t want to die,” as she struggled to escape and reach the side. But every time she managed to break free, the orcas pulled her back.
“I just heard her scream my name,” trainer Karen McGee remembered.
“I threw the life-ring out to her. She was trying to grab the ring, but the whale, basically, wouldn’t let her. To them it was a play session, and she was in the water.”
Despite attempts to distract the whales by throwing fish and banging buckets, none of their usual commands worked. Keltie is said to have surfaced screaming one last time before tragically drowning.
It took staff two hours to retrieve Keltie’s body from the orcas, which had been stripped and covered in bruises from bite marks.
Sealand’s manager, Al Bolz, told reporters at the time, “It was just a tragic accident. I just can’t explain it.”
However, Paul Spong, director of OrcaLab in British Columbia who had conducted research at Sealand, saw it differently.
“If you pen killer whales in a small steel tank, you are imposing an extreme level of sensory deprivation on them,” he stated. “Humans who are subjected to those same conditions become mentally disturbed.”
The park closed shortly after the incident and Tilikum was sold to SeaWorld Orlando where he fathered 21 calves, making him the industry’s most prolific breeder.
There, trainers told the documentary they were unaware of his past, but on the morning of July 6, 1999, SeaWorld physical trainer Michael Dougherty glanced in the underwater viewing area by his office and saw Tilikum looking back with two human feet hanging down his side.
The unfortunate victim was 27-year-old Daniel Dukes, who had visited the park the previous day and managed to dodge security to stay overnight, seemingly for a moonlit swim with Tilikum.
His clothes were discovered neatly stacked by the poolside, and a post-mortem examination revealed he’d sustained cuts and puncture wounds to his head, body and left leg, with his testicles torn open.
In the absence of CCTV footage or witnesses, the coroner concluded that the cause of death was drowning and hypothermia.
Then came the tragic incident involving Dawn.
A spokesperson for SeaWorld has refuted claims that Tilikum’s involvement in the deaths of three individuals demonstrated aggressive behaviour, and in January 2017, he died from a bacterial infection at the age of 35.