Baby giraffe dies in freak accident at Dallas Zoo
DALLAS -- A baby giraffe whose birth at the Dallas Zoo was viewed live on the Internet worldwide has died in an accident.
A Dallas Zoo statement says Kipenzi, the 3-month-old giraffe, died about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. Zoo officials say she died immediately from three broken neck vertebrae.
According to zoo officials, Kipenzi was playing with her brother and running around the feeding yard, CBS Dallas station KTVT-TV reports. She made a sharp turn and accidentally ran into something, but it is not clear what she could have hit.
"Honestly, nobody saw the specific impact," Harrison Edell, the zoo's senior director of living collections, told KTVT-TV. "We heard it. We can tell from the injuries that she made contact with something. But there was nothing in the yard that was out of the ordinary. They were all aspects of the exhibit that she had encountered before."
Kipenzi's mother, Katie, was allowed to visit the calf's body before veterinarians and zoo keepers removed it.
Kipenzi's birth April 10 was live-streamed on the Animal Planet website. Kipenzi is Swahili for "loved one."