Poachers sneak into zoo, kill rhino, saw off horn with chainsaw

PARIS — A young male white rhino at a zoo just outside of Paris suffered a gruesome death in a place where he was thought to be safe.

On the night of March 6, poachers broke into the Thoiry Zoo through the rear entrance, and made their way to the white rhino enclosure. There, they found Vince, 4, who’d arrived at the zoo from the Netherlands in 2015.

Wasting no time, the poachers shot Vince in the head three times, slaying the animal, the Guardian reported.

The poachers then used a chainsaw to saw off Vince’s horn, potentially worth up to $60,000. The poachers began to hack off the dead rhino’s second horn, but didn’t finish the job, either due to mechanical failure or a disturbance of some kind.

The two other white rhinos at the zoo, Gracie, 37, and Bruno, 5, managed to escape the same bloody fate. This is believed to be the first time a rhino has been attacked and killed at a zoo in Europe, despite there being security cameras and on-site overnight staff in place.

Rhino horns are coveted for traditional Asian medicines, as they are said to act as an aphrodisiac.

Roughly 21,000 white rhinos are left in the world.