James Laurita (Hope Elephants photo)
Stepped on by an elephant
James Laurita, DVM, 56, cofounder with his brother Tom of the Hope Elephants sanctuary in Hope, Maine, was found dead in the sanctuary barn on September 9, 2014.
Laurita apparently fell while working alone, and was stepped on by one of the two resident former Carson & Barnes Circus elephants, Rosie and Opal.
“The elephant was not aggressive in any way. It was clearly an accident,” Maine state medicial examiner’s office administrator Mark Belserene told Rick Whittle of Associated Press. Belserene said the official cause of death was “asphyxiation and multiple fractures caused by compression of the chest.”
Both James and Tom Laurita were jugglers for the Carson & Barnes Circus in the late 1970s, Bangor Daily News staff writer Heather Steeves recalled in 2011, when Hope Elephants opened.
Dropping out of college to tour with Carson & Barnes, James Laurita became “a ring announcer and eventually an elephant trainer for the circus on and off for several years,” Steeves continued, “before leaving to work with elephants at zoos around the country. By the late 1980s he returned to school and became a veterinarian before heading to Maine.”
Beth & Merritt Clifton.
(Geoff Geiger photo)
Rosie and Opal, both more than 40 years old and retired from performing, resided at the Endangered Ark Foundation in Hugo, Oklahoma before coming to Hope Elephants in 2012. They were returned to the Endangered Ark Foundation a week after James Laurita’s death.
James Laurita was the first U.S. elephant handler to be killed on the job since July 2006, when a female elephant at the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee knocked down senior caregiver Joanna Burke with her trunk and then stepped on Burke.
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Do you know why the elephants were returned to Endangered Ark Foundation after the incident?
The Hope Elephants board of directors stated on Facebook: “Jim is truly irreplaceable, leaving a monumental hole in our
community and beyond…unequivocal in expressing his belief that our first responsibility was to ensure the continued well-being of
Rosie and Opal. To that end, at least for the present, we will be returning the girls to the well-established, elephant care facility from which they came to us. They go back having greatly benefited from the host of therapies that Jim oversaw and we will work to see that those continue, so that Jim’s innovative veterinary techniques will benefit not only Rosie and Opal but, hopefully, other elephants as well.”