Last week, a young American graduate student who was leading a tour at the Jane Goodall Institute Chimpanzee Eden, Nelspruit, was pulled into the chimps’ enclosure by two alpha males after entering a restricted area. He was brutally assaulted and suffered multiple injuries that left him in critical condition fighting for his life.

Andrew Oberle, a 26-year-old University of Texas San Antonio graduate student who was working on a master’s degree in anthropology and primatology, had returned to the institute for a follow-up visit after an extended stay a year or so earlier. On Thursday of last week he was leading a group of tourists when he entered a “no go zone”, presumably to clear a suspicious rock which he feared the chimps could use as a projectile. Oberle cleared the first of two security fences and when he neared the second he was viciously pulled underneath by one of the two alpha males, Nikki and Amadeus. He was dragged 30m into the enclosure and then brutally assaulted by the primates. Lookers-on watched in terror, unable to assist the defenceless victim.

Eugene Cussons, managing director of the chimp sanctuary was quick to the scene and exited his vehicle, firing two warning shots to scare the chimps, they had no effect. The enraged chimps charged his car and smashed the windscreen before he was able to get off another shot, injuring Nikki. The injured chimp then made “vocalizations of submission and anxiety” and moved away. At that point medical staff were finally able to attend to Oberle, the entire ordeal lasted close to 30 minutes.

“The chimps were still out there. … He was curled up in a little ball,” said Lloyd Krause, the first ambulance service manager on the scene to remove Oberle. His clothes had been stripped from his body and he had mauled from head to toe, Krause said the only way he knew he was still alive was that his chest was moving. He was immediately rushed to the Mediclinic hospital in Nelspruit.

The vicious attack left Oberle with injures over his entire body. His right upper arm is broken, while his lower right arm muscle and ligaments are torn and exposed to the bone. Oberle’s left arm was mauled and he lost fingers on both hands.

One testicle was ripped off and he suffered deep lacerations to both legs and lost several toes.

Due to the extent of his injuries doctors were not able to operate immediately and had to wait until he was in a more stable condition. Yesterday he underwent six hours of surgery.

“The doctors are satisfied at the moment … with the patient’s condition,” reported the hospital manager overseeing Oberle’s recovery, Carmen Savva. “He’s responding better than expected.”

Oberle’s parents both responded positively, saying that he knew of the risks but had a true passion for working with the animals.

“He adored them,” Oberle’s mother said. “Since he was a little boy he just loved them, and I just have faith that … when all is said and done, he’s going to go right back into it.”

“He’s put a lot of work into it and I just don’t think he wants that to go to waste, because that is what he wants to be doing,” Andrew Oberle Sr. told ABC News Radio.

The incident has been investigated by the Mpumalanga tourism and parks board and it came to the conclusion that the animals responded very similarly to how they would’ve were they in wild. Therefore it was decided that the primates would be returned to the sanctuary.

[Source: MSNBC, ABC News, Times Live]