SCENERY: Travis was a 13-year old chimpanzee. When he was a child he worked for TV commercials and had been bought by Sandra Herold from a commercial breeder in the United States. Sandra became a widow a few years ago and lost her daughter in a car accident. Travis was the substitute of her dead daughter. Sandra and Travis lived in a small property in the suburb of Stamford, state of Connecticut, where a bedroom-prison had been built to keep him controlled.

Travis was a young chimpanzee (chimpanzee live as long as humans), fat, did not practice any exercise, although his body needed this kind of physical activity, and had a face of an old chimpanzee. There were moments that Travis had the option to walk through the house and share his life with his owner.
 
The vision Travis had of the world was based on the few opportunities he had to go out in a car, when he was younger and before his runaway from Stamford centre in 2003, which did not have any bad consequences as long as he only wanted to play. When Travis went out, he used diapers and a thick chain around his hip, in order for him to be, in theory, controlled.

Chimpanzees are social beings, who live in big communities and enjoy very much the interaction among the individuals. A human will never be able to substitute another chimpanzee as a partner. If we go deep inside Travis\’ mind, it is able to see that he was a prisoner, accustomed to habits that were strange to him, isolated from their equals, who he knew through videos and magazines, and that he had a huge freedom restriction, which incited even more his curiosity and desire to know the external world.

DECISION: There was a moment, and this must not had been the first time, that Travis found a way to get out of the house and walk around freely, maybe to find anyone similar to him, which would be useless. He also knew, like all the other chimpanzees know – including the ones who live in our sanctuaries -, that the keys are used to open the doors and allow the access to places that they never knew, or know only a little bit. He managed to get the keys, opened his prison and the external door of the house. He had no chains around his hips and was able to have some time of fun and freedom.
 
REACTION: Sandra Herold found herself with Travis unlocked and she, who is 70 years old, could not make him change his decision. She called a friend, Charla Nasch, 55 years old, who already knew the chimpanzee, but had no intimacy with him, asking her to go to the house to help her to make him come back to his prison. Nash arrived in her car and when she got out she met Travis, who knew she was there to interrupt his moment of fun and freedom. The reaction was immediate.

According to our experience, when a chimpanzee runs away, someone who is not of his real intimacy should never try to confront him, because he is going to react back. In the case of Travis, Sandra tried to get him out of Charla beating him with a spade and stabbing him several times. He did not reply back her attack, which shows clearly that he had feelings for her.
 
What can we say about attack and defense. Mrs. Herold tried to get him out of Nash with strokes, shouts and, after that, she attacked him with a big knife, as she had neither electronic nor chemical contention equipment, the same situation of the unprepared police of Stamford. When he sensed he had been injured by his own adoptive mother, Travis must have become more furious and continued to attack Nash, who was loosing part of her face and hands.
 
Severely wounded, Travis abandoned the crime scene while Mrs. Herold called the police, explaining desperately what was happening and begging to the police to come and kill the chimpanzee.
 
THE MURDER: When the police arrived, they isolated a security area to rescue Charla Nash, who was almost dead, lied on her own blood. Minutes later Travis came back and when he saw several police cars, he tried to open the doors of one vehicle, which the policemen considered to be an attempt of aggression. Then they shot at him, who still had the strength to come back into the house, leaving a blood trace, and died inside his bedroom-prison.

UNDERSTANDING WHAT HAPPENED: A simple escape aiming amusement – Travis must not have lived isolated in this house, with a 70-year old lady, who was not prepared or knew how to control him – ended up in a tragedy, when a person he considered to be a stranger appeared to catch him. Probably Travis also was jealous of her, because of some incidents that took place in the past. Nash did not have access to Travis when he was unlocked, only when he was imprisoned. There is no doubt that he neither trust nor liked her.

The explanation presented are all superficial, such as a chimpanzee who weights 90 kilos is three times stronger than a human; he was taking a medicine – Xanax – to treat Lyme disease, which impacts some neurological reactions; she had changed her hair, so he did not recognize her etc. In the end these justificatives do no explain anything, as long as no one was inside Travis\’ mind in the particular moment that originated the cruel attack.
 
OFICIAL LACK OF PREPARATION: Even knowing that a chimpanzee lived in that house, and had already caused problems, Stamford Police did not have any contention guns, neither electronic nor chemical, which today are common in well prepared police teams. Even more in an area where there are other wild beings that advance towards the towns. Killing is easier, it is the culture learnt in the years of war conflicts. There was a law in the state that prohibited monkeys that weighted more than 50 pounds, as pets, without a special register. Travis did not have this.

CHIMPANZEE VERSUS HUMANS, VIOLENT REACTIONS: In the very same instant Travis was having an aggressive reaction, hundreds of humans were being killed in the five continents, by other humans. And a lot of these actions do not have a plausible explanation (if this kind of death has any explanation at all) and no one cares. Bombs explode killing innocents, lost bullets hit children in the trafficking gunfire and the authorities do not even give a minute of attention to register the fact – it is not news though. An imprisoned chimpanzee, isolated from the world, treated with medicines without any prescription or medical advising, who looks for freedom and for the dreamed company of his equals, almost caused the death of someone who must never had been put among his desires, as she was not living together with him, she was not part of his routine. And this generated hours of promotion and articles in the world press.

MAY THE TRAGEDY BE AN EXAMPLE: For more than 15 years, GAP Project and other similar organizations fight for the recognition of the basic rights of chimpanzees (and of the great primates) in our human societies, in order to put an end in their exploitation, in medical experiments, entertainment industry, marketing, advertising and exhibition in circus and zoos. Chimpanzees, in special, have 99,4% of our DNA, carry the same blood (there can be blood transfusions between men and chimpanzees) and have an ancestor in common with us, who gave origin to the modern man. They have feelings, intelligence, memory, altruism, live in society, love, hate, envy, feel fear and sad, understand our language. They can not talk, but they know to communicate their desires and reactions.

There are more than 40 sanctuaries in the world that give home to great primates who had been caught out of their habitats in the last 50 years or who had born in captivity. It is necessary more 40 sanctuaries, as a minimum number, to give shelter to those who are still being tortured in medical experiment labs in United States – more than 1000 – or who still work in circus and other entertainment places. The exhibition of great primates must be forbidden, as it generates stress and mental illness, which rarely are completely cured. The price of one day of the wars that are sponsored all over the world, declared or non-declared ones, would be enough to guarantee a decent refugee, free from exploitation signed by humans, to more than 3000 chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas, who are treated improperly, a lot of then even being tortured with no mercy.
 
Great primates hunting to feed humans, in places where there are still animals in the wild, is shutting down quickly the wild population. Babies\’ trafficking, that still exists in countries of East Asia and middle-east, is an activity that must be radically vanished. Heavy penalties must be imposed to those who get involved in these kinds of operations, aiming to repress them, so that no more great primates are forced to live in captivity.

If human societies had already understood this message, we would not have to witness tragedies like these, nor see the suffering of beings that are so close to us.