Gorilla incident at London zoo ‘concluded,’ police say

Police and evacuated visitors stand outside London Zoo after a gorilla escaped in London, Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016. London police say an incident involving a gorilla that escaped from its enclosure at the London Zoon has been concluded. There are reports the animal was subdued Thursday with a tranquilizer gun and recaptured. There were no initial reports of injuries. (Lynne Chapman via AP)

LONDON (AP) — A potentially dangerous incident involving an escaped gorilla was “concluded” at the London Zoo Thursday evening, police said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries to the public, although visitors to the central London zoo were briefly locked down in a cafeteria and heavily armed police were summoned to help zoo workers hunt down the animal.

The animal was apparently subdued by a tranquilizer gun and recaptured. The zoo, inside Regent’s Park in a crowded London neighborhood, houses at least seven gorillas in its popular Gorilla Kingdom attraction.

One of the animals escaped Thursday afternoon, forcing a lockdown of visitors and prompting zoo officials to summon heavily armed police.

Witness Brad Evans told BBC Radio that he was drinking coffee in the zoo cafeteria when zoo workers told them there were locked in and couldn’t leave because a gorilla had gotten out of its enclosure.

He said armed police quickly arrived and that customers were allowed to leave the zoo shortly later.

It wasn’t yet clear if the gorilla escaped from the zoo premises into the heavily populated urban neighborhood outside.

The London Zoo said only that it was “managing an incident.” More details were expected later.

In 2007, a 400-pound gorilla escaped from an enclosure and ran amok at a Rotterdam zoo in the Netherlands, biting one woman and dragging her around before he was finally subdued.

The Diergaarde Blijdorp zoo was evacuated and the 11-year-old gorilla, named Bokito, was eventually contained in a restaurant within the park.