Tuesday marks three years since Harambe, a western lowland gorilla, was shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo.
The 400-pound gorilla was killed by Cincinnati Zoo staff on May 28, 2016, after a 3-year-old child fell into the gorilla enclosure.
The boy breached the barrier, zoo director Thane Maynard said, prompting serious changes at Cincinnati’s world-renowned zoo.
Cincinnati’s Gorilla World reopened more than a year after the incident with several changes in place. The changes are designed to reassure as much as anything else. The new barrier fencing that was installed is six inches higher than before with knotted rope netting as a new feature.
Three years later, the gorilla’s name lives on, largely in a satirical sense.
Harambe 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.
He’s even been mock-nominated for president.