Wild Chimpanzee Attacks Another Child

Another child has been injured after a chimpanzee went on the rampage in Cocopa Camp #6, injuring a four-year-old boy on his heel and face.

According to the mother, Ruth Dolo, on Wednesday, September 29, 2021, a large-sized chimpanzee entered their village, seized her two children, a four-month-old boy, and a four-year-old boy, and ran away with them in the bush. She explained that after the chimpanzee had fled into the bush with the kids, she began yelling and crying for help. Her husband and other villagers came and went after the chimpanzee.

“When they went after the chimpanzee, they saw the baby was covered up with leaves, while the older one had been bitten both on his face and his heel,” she narrated. "When the baboon (chimpanzee) saw the people coming, she dropped the four-year-old boy and ran away, eating my son's heel and his face."

The situation has created fear in the entire Cocopa Plantation, especially around Camp # 6, where the incident actually occurred, as hunters have been put on the alert, warning women to stay out of the hospital. The Statutory Superintendent of the Saclepea Statutory District Mr. Arthur Gonkartee Sahn has ordered all men, mainly hunters, to be on the alert and go after the chimpanzee.

However, the little boy is under intensive medical care at one of the local hospitals in Ganta. Less than a year ago, a chimpanzee grabbed a little girl and brutalized her in the nearby community of Tolkopa, on her way from school, along with friends, going to the farm.

There are many calls from across the county for the government to order the FDA to put wild chimpanzees under control, in spite of the fact that chimpanzees are an endangered species. About 10yrs ago, a chimpanzee went on a rampage in the Gbor Chiefdom, not too far from the Cocopa area. But that chimpanzee was at last killed by a hunter.