The whole incident is horrendous and sickens me.
For all the excuses about a child can run off in a split second - if you know your child is likely to wander or behave badly have him on restraints or don;t take him to the zoo until he;s old enough or well behaved enough to do as he is told. He squeezed through a fence - no one at any point told him to stay beside them, or stay away from the fence? His parents should have been watching him better.
But I have been to zoo where fro example penguins go for a walk along the pathway - spectators are given clear instructions to keep back, not cross a barrier line, not sit on the ground. They ignore the instructions - they are told again, they still ignore them - then of course they will complain if a penguin pecks them. On the same day at the same zoo, I saw a crowd of children about 8/9/10 yrs running all over the place weakly supervised by a couple of adult who occasionally shouted 'slow down' at them as they careered about knocking into people.
People ignore instructions, and children behave badly. Maybe you should have to take an exam to check you are not too stupid to go to a zoo or wildlife park before you are allowed in.
Of course they had to shoot the poor animal once the child was in danger, but yes I say poor beautiful majestic animal - an endangered animal, destroyed because people are stupid and can't watch their kids properly. Zoo's are not the best places in the world - it would be wonderful if these animals could all live in the wild, but because we destroy their environment, some attempt has to be made to preserve the species and set up breeding colonies.
Oh and I don't eat meat for all the 'you eat meat, why is a gorilla different from a cow' brigade.
I feel really upset that this animal has died unnecessarily. I wish the little boy no harm and hope he is OK, he is too young to know what his actions have led to. His parents aren't.