Lecturer sues safari operator after being trampled by an elephant
A UK-BASED luxury safari operator is being sued for more than £200,000 after a woman was trampled by an elephant during a holiday in the Serengeti.
Sara Graves, a university lecturer and researcher, suffered a broken pelvis and other injuries when the animal attacked her at Lemala Ndutu safari camp in Tanzania in March 2019. Ms Graves, 36, paid around £4,400 for the seven-night holiday, which included accommodation in tented camps boasting leather sofas and chandeliers. She claims that she was chased and trampled just after leaving her tent.
The academic, who was on safari with her sister, said she was left emotionally scarred and physically injured.
She is suing Yellow Zebra Travel, a Surrey-based tour operator that organised the holiday, because, she says, it failed to ensure camp staff were adequately trained. The company has been named Europe’s leading safari operator at the World Travel Awards seven years in a row.
In papers lodged at the High Court in London, her lawyers say she booked the safari after seeing a video on the firm’s website featuring Julian Carter-manning, its director and co-founder. In it,
he says: “You … are in very good hands. From the moment you enquire to the moment you get back, we look after you.” The court papers say that Ms Graves and her sister “encountered a lone bull elephant which was missing a section of one tusk” and “appeared grumpy/ready to charge” near the camp on the morning of March 7, 2019.
“The camp was not fenced or enclosed,” her barrister Matthew Chapman QC writes. That afternoon, Ms Graves encountered the same elephant on a camp footpath. It trumpeted and lifted its front legs before charging Ms Graves and trampling her, he adds.
Camp staff should not have permitted Ms Graves “to return to her tent on foot, alone when an aggressive lone bull elephant was known to be in the camp vicinity and, indeed, was in the camp”, court papers allege.
Yellow Zebra Travel declined to comment during legal proceedings.