This is the moment an enraged bull elephant flipped over a car containing a British teacher and her fiance during an African safari.
Sarah Brooks, 30, and her fiance were filming the animal from their car as it drank at a waterhole when it turned and went for them. It flipped their vehicle and shunted it around 130ft down a track into thick bushland.
The elephant’s tusk ripped through Miss Brooks’ upper thigh during the ordeal at the Kruger National Park in South Africa. The attack was filmed by tourists travelling in a car behind. The teacher, from Spalding in Lincolnshire, was airlifted to hospital where she required several days of treatment.
She has since been discharged and is believed to still be in the country recovering with her fiance Jans de Klerk, who escaped unhurt. The couple were on holiday to celebrate their recent engagement and for Miss Brooks to meet her fiance’s South African family, friends said.
Park officials later shot the elephant which was in musth, a periodic condition in males that makes them aggressive when their testosterone levels rise by up to 60 times. It also had an injury, which is believed to have increased its aggressiveness.
African bull elephants can weigh up to six tons. Describing the December 30 attack, park spokesman William Mabasa said: ‘The elephant suddenly stopped, turned around and rapidly walked towards the vehicle, which was stationary. ‘It charged at them, attacked the vehicle and flipped it over off the road into the thick bushes.’
Miss Brooks, who studied biomedical science at Northumbria University and now teaches at a school in Spalding, was discharged from the Medi-Clinic Nelspruit earlier this week. Neighbours at the home she shares with her fiance said yesterday that she was yet to return from South Africa.
Lyn Skells, a retired teacher who has been friends with Mr de Klerk for three years, said the couple have extended their stay for another three weeks as they recover from their ordeal. She said: ‘They had just got engaged and were on holiday so she could meet all his family in Africa. It really is awful what happened at what should have been a happy time for them.’ The attack was believed to be the third by an elephant at the Kruger park last year.
Another of the animals was shot dead earlier in December when it charged at traffic officers. It had apparently ignored warning shots.
Two tourists were also injured when their vehicle was overturned by an elephant in April.
And British pensioner Colin Manvell, 68, was trampled to death by a wild bull elephant while bird-watching at a jungle waterhole in Tamil Nadu, southern India, last year.
Mr Mabasa advised park visitors to keep a safe distance from wild animals.
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