Cincinnati Zoo Twitter accounts gone amid Harambe comments

Cincinnati Zoo Twitter accounts gone amid Harambe comments | iNFOnews.ca
FILE - In this May 30, 2016 file photo, Alesia Buttrey, of Cincinnati, holds a sign with a picture of the gorilla Harambe during a vigil in his honor outside the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, in Cincinnati. Harambe, the Ohio zoo gorilla shot and killed after a 3-year-old boy got into his enclosure, has taken on life after death. The late 17-year-old great ape has shown up in tongue-in-cheek petitions to rename the hometown Cincinnati Bengals, to add his face to Mount Rushmore or the Lincoln Memorial, and to put him on the dollar bill. He has grown the angel wings and halo of a deity in social media memorials. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

CINCINNATI – The Twitter accounts of an Ohio zoo targeted by online critics and trolls over the shooting of a gorilla have been taken down.

The Cincinnati Zoo has said it’s not amused by the memes, online petitions and signs about Harambe (huh-RAHM’-beh), a 17-year-old great ape killed in May by a special zoo response team after a 3-year-old boy got into his enclosure. Harambe has been mourned, memorialized and satirized nearly continuously since his death.

Those seeking the Twitter sites Tuesday of the zoo or its director, Thane Maynard, got messages saying, “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”

Maynard recently told The Associated Press by email that the zoo family is “still healing.”

A zoo spokeswoman confirmed without comment Tuesday that it has deactivated its Twitter accounts.

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