Orlando Business Journal broadcast partner Central Florida News 13 reported that Orange County EMT officials on the scene said the woman was not breathing, and later Orange County Fire Rescue reported that it was a fatality.
The accident is reported to have happened during a Dine with Shamu event just before 2 p.m. The dolphin and whale shows for the rest of the day have been canceled, but SeaWorld remains open.
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Police said the female trainer slipped and fell into his pool but a witness said the orca rose up from the water and grabbed her by the waist and shook her.
The 30-year-old, 5-ton marine mammal - the largest killer whale in captivity - has killed before: He drowned a biology student in 1991 and a naked, dead gatecrasher was found draped on his back in 1999.
The previous incidents were not attacks but misguided attempts by the otherwise docile whale to play, experts said.
But Tilikum, nicknamed Telly, is getting old and he may be getting cranky.
Paramedics were unable to revive the 40-year-old trainer, who was pronounced dead at the scene at about 2 p.m. The park was closed.
Experts said they weren’t sure what set off the whale.
“What he did in the previous two incidents were not attacks - to him, the people were toys, and to a whale, being underwater for 20 minutes is nothing.
In 1991, 20-year-old Keltie Byrne, a University of Victoria marine biology student and part-time trainer, slipped into the orca pool at Sealand of the Pacific in British Columbia.
Tilikum took her into his mouth and dragged her around the pool, most of the time underwater.
The champion swimmer broke free and tried to escape, but Tilikum and two female orcas blocked her from getting out of the pool and began tossing her back and forth between them.
A screaming Byrne tried to climb out of the pool but the whales pulled her back in.
She drowned in the mouth of an orca holding her underwater. Sealand of the Pacific closed the following year and Tillikum was shipped to Sea World, where his primary job was siring calves - not performing.
His part in the Sea World show is brief and comes just at the end, when he soaks the audience with massive splashes.
Ya think?
It is obscene that “Tilly” wasn’t shot after killing Byrne. It takes a weirdo to say that was ‘play’ - that was torture of a vastly weaker animal by a killer.
George Adamson had the decency to shoot one of his favorite lions after it killed a man. He didn’t hesitate, but then, he had spent his life around wild animals. He wasn’t an urban eco-idiot.