Chimp Goes Ape; Victims Get $366

TULSA, Okla. — The City Commission voted Friday to pay $366 to two women zoo visitors who were bruised by a chimpanzee that had escaped from its enclosure.

Linda Ballard said that, when she visited the Tulsa Zoo with relatives on April 17, a chimpanzee “came running at me with both arms in the air.” The chimp knocked her to the concrete, she said.

Her mother, Betty Joe Farmer, said she swung her purse at the chimp, which then lunged at her husband as her granddaughter and another child climbed to the top of a park gate. The two women said they suffered bruises and were examined by a doctor the next day.