This is insane!
I feel bad about the gorilla, but the zoo keepers had a very short time to make a decision and they needed to save the child.
What if the gorilla had hurt or killed the child? Then the zoo would probably be held responsible for not choosing the life of a child over the life of an animal.
Yeah, the press likes to show that picture of him with his arm around the kid "protecting" him. What they don't show is the couple of times he is dragging the kid through the water where the kids head is hitting the concrete and could possibly have dislocated the kids arm.
In the end, you rely upon one single guy who will view the issue, and make a split-second decision. You can arm-chair quarterback all you want, but if you weren’t there...you can’t say much. I’m betting the guy who made the decision never expected this type of scenario to unfold and it was simply luck on the events of the day.
If zoos don’t want all the bad PR...then build enclosures that no one can fall into or climb into. It amazes me that we don’t have a hundred of such events to occur each year with nuts trying to climb into some pit with tigers.