LUSAKA, Zambia – An angry bull elephant charged a vehicle of tourists in Kafue National Park, overturning the vehicle and fatally injuring a Minnesota adventurer.  Killed was Gail Mattson, 79, a seasoned traveler.  Fellow tourists and their guide also were hurt. The attack was Saturday. News was delayed arriving home. Mattson split her time between the western Minneapolis suburb of Hopkins and snow-birding in Arizona. She died after being evacuated to a hospital. The elephant’s attack was chronicled from the vehicle on tourists’ cameras. The elephant stalked the vehicle at running speed for a few hundred yards. This was alongside a back road on the plains. Once caught up, the elephant pivoted and rammed the vehicle, then lifted it on his tusks dropped it on one side. Six tourists were in the vehicle,. What provoked the elephant wasn’t clear to investigators immediately. Four tourists on the game drive were treated for minor injuries. A fifth tourist was taken several hundred miles to a hospital in South Africa.

Mattson. In a fellow tourist’s camera before elephant attack.

Verbatim

Keith Vincent, chief executive of the company in charge of the game drive: “At around 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, the six guests were on a game drive when the vehicle was unexpectedly charged by the bull elephant. Our guides are all extremely well-trained and experienced, but sadly in this instance the terrain and vegetation was such that the guide’s route became blocked and he could not move the vehicle out of harm’s way quickly enough.”

Kafue National Park

At 8,600 square miles, it’s then largest national park in Zambia and the second largest in Africa. The park’s origins are in the early 1920s to combat attrition of wildlife. The park is home to 152 mammal species, 515 bird species, 70 reptile species, 58 fish species and 36 amphibian species. Elephants number about 4,800. Seasonal dirt roads criss-cross the park.

African elephants

Bulls are 10 to13 feet tall and weigh 10,000 to13,000 pounds. Can run 40 mph. .Unlike their Indian distant cousins , African elephants don’t lend themselves to domestication.  These aren’t circus animals. In Africa they are moving to extinction because they’re hunted for their tusks and aphrodisiac potions, Poachers are active even in national parks and wildlife reserves.