An elephant trampled its handler to death and ran off with two Russian tourists – a mother and her nine-year-old daughter – who were riding it during a trek in southern Thailand, police said Monday.
Rescue teams tracked down the elephant about three kilometres away and tranquilized it to rescue the tourists clinging to its back, police Lieutenant-Colonel Narong Laksanawimol said.
"It took almost three hours for the elephant to calm down completely. We had to tie it to a tree," Narong said by telephone.
He said the animal began attacking the 60-year-old handler about 15 minutes after the start of what was supposed to be a scenic ride for the tourists near a waterfall in the city of Phang Nga. The handler's crushed body was found in a creek.
He said the male elephant had never attacked anyone since it began working for a tourist company two years ago, adding that the animal was in musth, a state of aggressive sexual excitement.