A woman from the United States died this week after an elephant attacked a vehicle she and other tourists were in while traveling in Zambia, according to local officials—marking the second deathly elephant attack this year.
The attack happened on Wednesday when a tourist group stopped to watch an elephant herd near the Maramba Cultural Bridge in Livingstone, Zambia, local officials told ZNBC, the Zambian national broadcaster.
Juliana Gle Tourneau, 64, from New Mexico was killed in the attack that happened around 5:50 p.m. local time after she was knocked out of the vehicle and trampled by an elephant that was in the herd they were looking at, the Associated Press reported.
Officials did not say whether anyone else was injured or what led to the elephant’s aggression, and it’s unknown whether Tourneau was traveling with a company.
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Earlier this year, an 80-year-old American woman also died when a bull elephant “unexpectedly charged” a tourist vehicle in Kafue National Park in Zambia. Four other people were injured in that attack, according to the CEO of Wilderness Safaris, which was the company running that expedition. A video of that attack circulating on social media was being investigated by authorities. There was another attack by an elephant in South Africa earlier in March—in which an elephant lifted a vehicle with its trunk before dropping it—though that attack did not result in any casualties, ABC News reported.
Elephants are typically peaceful animals, but can become aggressive toward humans when sick, harassed, around their offspring or experiencing “musth,” a time for male elephants in which they experience heightened aggression, increased testosterone excretion and temporal gland secretion, according to a 2022 report published in MDPI. Elephants that feel threatened may charge people or vehicles, according to South African National Parks, though most are “mock charges” and they break away before hitting the target. If they follow through with the charge, elephants are capable of severe harm and damage, including killing other elephants or wrecking cars.