Lucinda Jacobs says she will never go on a game drive again after an elephant tried to topple their vehicle.
|||A Cape Town woman, who was injured when an elephant flipped the game vehicle she was in, believes the reserve’s owner has played down the incident.
Lucinda Jacobs, 27, from Belhar, is still recovering at a hospital in Bellville.
The Cape Argus reported the story on Monday of how Jacobs and another woman were injured while jumping out of the vehicle trying to escape from the elephant.
Jacobs said she wanted to tell her side of the story, which she felt the owner of the game reserve, Pieter de Jager, had neglected to tell.
She said they had visited the Fairy Glen private game reserve just outside Worcester a week ago on a team-building exercise with her colleagues.
Jacobs said there had been 20 people in the vehicle, including the driver, when they set off for a game drive at noon last Friday.
She said they had first gone to see the lions before heading off to see the elephants.
They first drove past the male elephant before driving back and stopping next to it.
“The elephant kept moving closer and closer and I remember telling the driver ‘I think we should leave now’ as the elephant got too close.”
Jacobs said she had not known at the time that the vehicle had a faulty starter.
She said: “The elephant flipped the driver out of his seat and on to the passenger side with its tusks before using them to flip the vehicle to the side.
“People started running and I also jumped out.”
Earlier this week, De Jager said the elephant had just been playing around at the time.
He said: “When the elephant got to the vehicle, he lifted the front part of the vehicle with his tusks, which must have scared the tourists, because two women jumped off and injured their legs.” They were taken to hospital.
Jacobs said that when she tried to move after the incident, she could not feel her legs.
“My legs started swelling and my boss took my boots off.”
She said she had not been able to wait for an ambulance and had been taken to Worcester Mediclinic before the ambulance arrived.
Doctors had operated on her right knee and put screws in it.
She will be having an operation on her other knee on Thursday.
Jacobs said all she wanted was to have the use of her legs and to go back home to her husband.
“I feel they (the game reserve) should also take responsibility. It was my first game drive and I will never go back again.
“I have developed an overnight fear of elephants and I can’t sleep… it replays in my head over and over.”
Jacobs said another colleague had injured her spine and the others had minor bruises and cuts, but that “everyone is traumatised”.
She said doctors had told her that her rate of recovery would depend on how Friday’s operation on her right knee went.
De Jager was not available on Thursday when the Cape Argus tried to contact him.
neo.maditla@inl.co.za
Cape Argus