Chester Zoo to pay £75,000 for death of elephant keeper

Chester Zoo has been fined £25,000 and ordered to pay £50,000 costs after a keeper was butted to death by an elephant in 2001.

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Richard Hughes was helping to move a 30-year-old female elephant between pens when the animal lashed out and then headbutted him three times.

Yesterday at Chester Crown Court, professor Gordon Reid, director of the North of England Zoological Society, which runs the Zoo, admitted to breaching the Health & Safety Act.