A much loved hippopotamus called Gustavito has died after being savagely beaten in El Salvador’s national zoo, sending shockwaves around the country.
Gustavito, who was 15, was born in Guatemala and taken to El Salvador when he was two years old. He was a favorite of zoo visitors.
Vladan Henriquez, the zoo’s director, told reporters during a news conference that the hippo had been set upon in the middle of night.
Attackers apparently broke into his enclosure on Tuesday night and beat him with metal bars, rocks, knives and an ice pick, leaving him covered in bruises and puncture wounds.
Zoo keepers did not realize that the animal had been injured until Thursday, however, when he started acting strangely, refusing to eat and spending most of his time curled up in his pool of water.
Despite veterinarians’ best efforts to keep him alive, Gustavito died on Sunday as a result of his injuries.
“We find it difficult to believe that someone is capable of doing that to a defenseless animal,” said Mauricio Velasquez, the head of El Salvador’s Zoological Foundation.
Salvadorans flooded social media with tributes to the animal and denounced the senseless act of cruelty in a country that is already plagued by gang violence.
“We’re used to seeing the dead every day,” a Salvadoran street vendor told The Associated Press. “But this tops it all. They killed an animal that only entertained us.”
Others likened Gustavito’s death to that of Harambe, the gorilla who was famously shot and killed in Cincinnati zoo last year, prompting international outrage and a deluge of memes and over-the-top celebrity tributes.
Justice minister Mauricio Ramirez Landaverde denounced the crime and said an investigation had been launched. The motive behind the attack remains unknown.
With over 5,200 homicides Let tLrecorded last year, El Salvador is one of the most violent countries in the world.