The White House honored Harambe the gorilla ten years after Harambe was shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo when a child fell into the gorilla’s enclosure.
In a post on X, the White House described Harambe as a “true patriot.” The White House also noted Thursday, May 28, would mark ten years since Harambe’s death, adding that Harambe “became a symbol of loyalty, strength, chaos, unity, and the strange beauty of the internet bringing millions of people together for one cause: never forgetting Harambe.”
“Today, we remember a legend,” the White House wrote. “On this day in history, Harambe would have celebrated another birthday. An icon that became part of internet history, American culture, and an entire generation’s timeline. Tomorrow marks 10 years since we lost him. Ten years since the moment the world stopped scrolling and collectively mourned something bigger than a meme.”
Breitbart News reported that, in the days that followed Harambe’s being shot on May 28, 2016, after a three-year-old child fell into the gorilla enclosure, activists who were “devastated” by the gorilla’s death gathered at the zoo to mourn his loss. At the time, people held signs that read, “All Animals Lives Matter,” and “R.I.P. Harambe.”
One woman, Kim O’Connor, who recorded a video of Harambe interacting with the young child, explained to Cincinnati’s WCPO at the time, “the footage she recorded doesn’t even show the worst parts of” how Harambe had handled the three-year-old.
“The horrific part, worse than what my video captures happened on the cement part of that exhibit, and I didn’t capture that video,” O’Connor explained. “I would have never captured that video.”
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