Transcript
00:00
with those explosive charges from a woman who was working at sea world when that trainer was drowned by a 17-foot orca this all comes to light on the day that the osha report on the incident is due to be released and we’re going to hear from the whistleblower in just a
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moment here but first yunji de nies with a look back at the theme park tragedy now six months ago a tourist home video captured don branch show playfully feeding tilikum the killer whale but moments later this show would take a horrifying turn when the six ton whale turned on his trainer came
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back around to the glass jumped up and grabbed the trainer by the waist and started shaking her silently and her shoe was her shoe floating a police report describes multiple trainers attempting to corral tilikum using nets with branch show inside tilikum’s mouth she did not
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survive immediately questions arose over how this could happen to a 17-year veteran of sea world seen here talking about the animals she loved we interact with them day in day out we’re working together and having a lot of fun as well investigators learned tilley had a
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violent past including drowning a trainer at a park in canada seaworld says they did not allow trainers in the water with tilly but brancho was filmed in a pool lying next to the killer whale just moments before the attack sadly cynic who brought tilly to sea world
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told us the whale was likely intrigued by branch show’s ponytail don if she was standing here with me right now would tell you that it was her that was her mistake and allowing that to happen after her death sea world barred trainer from being in the water with all killer
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whales including at this emotional tribute to brand show today osha is set to reveal the results of its investigation shedding new light on how a performance meant to showcase the wonders of whales could have gone so horribly wrong for good morning america yunji de nies abc news
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linda simons was hired as seaworld’s director of health and safety a week before that tragic incident she says she was fired two months later because seaworld didn’t want her to speak to osha investigators and now simon’s speaking out for the first time about her experience at that theme park and
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she joins us with a returning maurice arcadia welcome to you both this morning linda i know to this day you’ve been able to get the images out of your mind about what happened that day can you take us back to what you actually witnessed at the park i showed up at the pools where telecom
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had taken dawn into and it was very chaotic a lot of people responded probably about 85 people responded but i saw very disturbing images that i felt the team members were being placed in danger there were people in high heels on the rock walls there were people jumping on
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the gates that separate the pools i was concerned about that and when they finally got tilikum in the medical pool and lifted him up team members were permitted to go into the pool to take dawn out of tilikum’s mouth as he was still thrashing about so there were a
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number of red flags that you saw in just responding to the incident justin responding and i was only there a week when i saw all of that you mentioned you were there for a week do you believe that you had enough time to wrap your head around the rules the safety regulations there in that week for
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animal procedures i had not gotten into that in the investigation on the two months that i was there very in-depth into the procedures and what sea world allowed to happen but there was a drill in fact not long before the incident there was an exercise at the beginning of february before i started
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i requested the paperwork on that exercise and it was a very less than a page long of timeline of when people responded and i asked where the critique was when you have an exercise you want to know what went well what went wrong what needs to be corrected and they said
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that was not completed because the drill went so badly that they were going to run another drill people did not respond those that did respond did not respond properly that’s incredible so there wasn’t even a report because the results were so poor correct there’s been so much about this tilly
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talk that happens at the theme park people knew about this ahead of time what’s this all about the tilley talk is an orientation for anyone coming into the stadium to work with the whales whether you’ve been at sea world and other positions or you’re brand new to sea world and what
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they do is they talk to you about going in the water with tilly that if you get into the water with tilly you will come out of corpse letting them know how dangerous an animal he is so that’s what they would say that you wouldn’t come out alive i want to tell the viewers this morning what sea
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world has said in a statement about you and your employment linda simon’s worked for seaworld for only a few weeks and was fired not for the reasons she cites but rather for poor performance during the osha inspection what’s your response to that i never received any negative feedback verbal or
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in writing in fact from the president ceo of the corporation on down i only received positive comments on my response to the osha investigation i know that peta has reached out to you and that the organization has also written a letter to the governor of florida
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and maurice let me ask you what what is peta hoping to get from the governor the same thing that we are to get to get to the bottom to get to the truth the investor sea world has manipulated the investigation and we want an impartial agency to come in and investigate properly and linda was
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prevented from from presenting everything that was required by osha we need to do a better investigation a better job and peter and us have the same interest with that and linda are you hoping to actually see charges in this case i want to make sure that it is investigated and that the safety of the
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team members who remain is not jeopardized when you hear about tilly talk and the fact that there was a history with this animal do you fear that this could happen again i think that if they’re put into that close proximity it could easily happen again all right linda simons and your attorney
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maurice arcadia thanks so much for being here this morning very brave of you to speak out here thank you thank you both time now for the weather and sam hey good morning again dave we’re going to talk heat because a lot of places in california well really the coast
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you and your employment linda simon’s worked for seaworld for only a few weeks and was fired not for the reasons she cites but rather for poor performance during the osha inspection what’s your response to that i never received any negative feedback verbal or in writing in fact
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from the president ceo of the corporation on down i only received positive comments on my response to the osha investigation i know that peta has reached out to you and that the organization has also written a letter to the governor of florida and maurice let me ask you what what is
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peta hoping to get from the governor the same thing that we are to get to get to the bottom to get to the truth the investigation sea world has manipulated the investigation and we want an impartial agency to come in and investigate properly and linda
