A trainer died a terrible de@th when a SeaWorld orca cr*shed him and “v**lently played with his b0dy.”
Keto, the k!ller whale, was born in 1995 and spent the rest of his life in captivity.
He never swam in the ocean; instead, he spent his days in a water park in Tenerife, where he entertained hundreds of people.
His mother, Kalina, or ‘Baby Shamu,’ was the first orca to be born in a SeaWorld amusement park.
Keto had three calves of his own over the years: Adán, Victoria, and Ula.
Before relocating to the Canary Islands, he performed all around the world, including in water parks in San Diego, Ohio, and Texas.
Following his final move, Keto tragically launched a terrible attack on a trainer.
Alexis Martínez’s girlfriend said he was “handsome, generous, and funny.” He was a skilled trainer.
The 29-year-old worked with animals at Loro Parque in Tenerife and was used to being around such big predators.
According to The Sun, he told his girlfriend that “something could happen at any time.”
He is claimed to have said, “My job is especially dangerous, and I really need to be well rested and ready.”
On Christmas Eve, 2009, Martínez’s worries would come true.
Martínez was said to have played a key role in directing the marine mammals in rehearsals, but he seemed to have his doubts.
Martínez and Keto, who was owned by SeaWorld, started working on the Christmas show in the training pool on what seemed like a routine day.
According to a company incident report, the huge orca ‘appeared in a happy mood.’
But Keto would supposedly start to act strangely.
While floating on the surface of the water with the trainer, he didn’t seem to be doing many of his maneuvers right.
Since then, staff members have said that Keto seems to have purposely put himself between his trainer and the platform on that sad day.
At this time, the underwater stage call came and Martínez began swimming, with Keto leaning into him.
After that, a different trainer started using controls that always worked with the k!ller whales. However, Keto did not respond and continued to drive Martínez to the bottom of the pool with his rostrum — a projection at the tip of a whale’s mouth that functions like a beak.
Authorities were informed (via The Sun) by Rafael Sanchez, an assistant supervisor at Orca Ocean, that the animal in issue approached him, struck him, and played brutally with his b0dy.
The trainer watching the incident realized that things were becoming worse and started using more signals to manage the orca.
For a short while, this seemed to work.
Keto resurfaced to the surface of the pool and took a breath, but, he would dive back down to Martínez within seconds.
Horribly, those who were there watched Keto come back to the surface with the 29-year-old on the tip of his rostrum and his mouth closed, according to the Mirror.
After being let go, Martínez sank to the bottom of the pool.
Trainers would quickly try to get Keto to go into another pool, but he reportedly fought them off and started fiddling with the gate.
When a net was thrown into the pool, Martínez’s b0dy was found. This made Keto swim into the water next to it.
Sadly, the 29-year-old had terrible injuries, such as bleeding inside his b0dy.
“Deadly injuries from an orca attack, including multiple compression fractures, tears to vital organs, and the animal’s bite marks on his b0dy,” according to Martínez’s post-mortem.
Keto, who passed away in 2024, was later described as ‘frustrated and dangerous’ by The Whale Sanctuary Project.
Dawn Brancheau, a SeaWorld trainer, would die at age 44 just a few months after Alexis Martínez died. Tilikum, her orca partner, attacked her for a long time and brutally.
Orcas are not dangerous to people in general. There are no reported incidents of an orca purposely injuring a human in the wild, as per Business Insider.
Discover Wildlife says that the word “k!ller whale” comes from “k!ller of whales,” not “k!ller of people.”