A Swiss woman is dead and three other foreign tourists are in hospital in Phuket after an elephant went berserk during a trekking tour in Surat Thani yesterday.
Speaking from his wife’s bedside at Bangkok Hospital Phuket this afternoon, Australian tourist Sean Gothe said he and his wife Helen were among eight couples on a one-day tour to Khao Sok National Park.
In the afternoon, the Gothes climbed aboard their elephant, a 31-year-old female, and the other couples did likewise.
At about the half-way point in the ride, three or four of the animals met in a clearing and the mahouts (elephant drivers) exchanged cameras to take photos.
At this point, one of the elephants went berserk and attacked the elephant the Gothes were riding on, trying to rip off its trunk.
All of the elephants ran off in different directions, with the berserk beast giving chase to the one with the Gothes on board.
Mr Gothe and his wife feared that they and the elephant would fall off a cliff to their deaths as the mahouts desperately tried to calm the animals, Mr Gothe said.
Both animals were bleeding from being struck by the sharpened metal tools used by the mahouts, he added.
The retaining bar on the Gothes’ elephant’s saddle eventually dislodged and Mrs Gothe fell off the right side.
Mr Gothe said he feared she had hit her head on a rock as she lay motionless on the ground while the elephant beneath him continued to run full tilt into the distance.
The crazed elephant was carrying a Swiss woman in her 60s and an Englishmen who was paired up with her for the trek by the mahouts.
The elephant threw off the mahout and the Swiss woman, who was then intentionally trampled to death by the enraged animal.
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