Kruger Park picnic turned into nightmare when gang of men shot monkeys with paintball gun

SKUKUZA – When Mr Jonathan Parker of Centurion in Pretoria decided to take his grandmother to the Tshokwane Camp in the Kruger National Park (KNP) last Sunday, they were looking forward to a quiet day sitting under the trees with his family to enjoy the park.

But soon, what should have been a picnic close to the riverbed, turned into a nightmare for his grandmother, who Parker said is very sensitive to animal abuse.

Twelve men used a paintball gun to take turns in shooting paintballs at the monkeys at the picnic site. They laughed and joked about it.

“We reported them to the manager and she phoned a ranger to attend to the issue. While he was there they did nothing but the moment he left they continued, and this time they shot at the starlings as well, and took some random shots into the riverbed,” said Parker.

The manager herself then confronted them but they ignored her. “She was distraught when we asked her about them again, saying that she had confronted them, but what could she do? She was one woman against 12 men!” said Parker.

Parker and his brother took a video of the men, despite one of them trying to block them by standing in front of the camera. “We also succeeded in getting a photo of their car and wrote down their registration number.”

Parker and his family left soon afterwards.

“We were upset that nothing could be done to these men.”

All this information was given to SANParks to follow up.

Mr Ray Thakhuli, general manager of media and public relations of SANParks, said that the incident was being investigated. “If the allegations are true we will track these people down. We take incidents like these very seriously and the guilty parties will be brought to book. They don’t belong in the park and we don’t want them here,” he said.

He explained that for such transgressions hefty fines could be imposed and the culprits could be banned for life from all SANParks facilities.

* More Kruger idiots