Tourist injured after being flung around by elephant

An American man was lobbed around by a wild elephant in southern China on Monday, when the elephant picked him up with his trunk and left him with stomach injuries and fractured ribs.

An English teacher in the central city of Wuhan, Jeremy Allen McGill was in southern China on holiday at Wild Elephant Valley, when a security guard found him unconscious. The elephant park is in the southwestern Yunnan province, in the Xishuangbanna area.

A Xishuangbanna foreign official commented on the accident saying, “It wasn’t clear why he was attacked. The elephant just used its trunk to pick the man up and then let go.” The man said McGill’s lungs were injured and he had broken ribs when he arrived at the hospital. 15 stitches were required on his stomach.

The official says injuries are rare but not impossible there, and there was an incident of an injured tourist in 2006, when a woman was charged while sitting beside the road.