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A tourist from New Mexico was killed in Zambia when an elephant charged her, according to the police commissioner who investigated the incident. She is the second tourist to be fatally attacked by an elephant in the southern African country this year.<\/p>\n
The woman who was killed, Juliana G. Letourneau, 64, of Albuquerque, had just visited Victoria Falls, a 350-foot waterfall that straddles the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, and was heading back to her hotel on Wednesday when the group that she was traveling with encountered a herd of elephants on the road.<\/p>\n
She and others stepped out of their vehicle to observe the animals, said Auxensio Daka, the police commissioner for the southern province of Zambia, in a telephone interview on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey stopped to watch the elephants, and unfortunately one of them charged towards them as they were standing there watching,\u201d Mr. Daka said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Daka said that Ms. Letourneau was taken to a clinic in Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park near Livingstone, Zambia, where she was declared dead on arrival. Her injuries included deep wounds on the right shoulder blade and forehead, a fractured left ankle and a slightly depressed chest, according to a police statement.<\/p>\n
No other injuries were reported from the encounter with the elephant.<\/p>\n
Ms. Letourneau\u2019s brother said on Saturday that he had no details about the incident, and declined to be interviewed. Other relatives could not be reached.<\/p>\n
This past March, a 79-year-old American woman was on safari at Kafue National Park, in a central region of western Zambia, when an elephant charged the tour group\u2019s vehicle, according to media reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, human deaths are rare in encounters with elephants, according to experts.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is really a freak accident,\u201d Nikhil Advani, a senior director at the World Wildlife Fund, a nonprofit that works on environmental protection and conservation efforts, said of the two incidents happening so close together. \u201cIt\u2019s probably just some sort of coming together of unfortunate circumstances that led to this.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. State Department said in a statement on Friday that millions of Americans travel to areas where there is wildlife every year, and that it is uncommon for elephants and other wild animals to attack visitors in Zambia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Letourneau\u2019s death was first reported by the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation, a government-controlled news outlet, which said that human and wildlife encounters in Livingstone, the city where the incident occurred, were rising amid the country\u2019s worst drought in four decades<\/a>.<\/p>\n The climate conditions are worsening food insecurity in Zambia, which has one of the highest rates of malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa, and pushing wildlife into human habitats<\/a> in search of food and water, according to the report.<\/p>\n