Dawn Brancheau was born as Dawn Therese LoVerde on April 16, 1969 to Marion LoVerde and Charles LoVerde. She was the youngest of six children and always had a love for animals. During a family vacation to Orlando, she set her heart on becoming an orca trainer. She graduated from the University of South Carolina with degrees in psychology and animal behavior. She spent two years working with dolphins at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey then began her career at SeaWorld Orlando working with otters and sea lions in 1994. She started working with killer whales in 1996. She also married SeaWorld stunt water skier Scott Brancheau the same year. She worked with killer whales for 15 years as a SeaWorld trainer, eventually holding the title of senior animal trainer.
On February 24, 2010, she was performing a show with
Tilikum, a large bull orca (the largest in captivity, measuring 22.5 feet long and weighing roughly 12,500 pounds). Near the end of the "Dine with Shamu Show," Tilikum pulled her into the water by either her arm or her ponytail (there are conflicting eyewitness accounts) and brought her to the bottom of the pool. She drowned and suffered many injuries including her scalp being entirely torn off from her head and her left arm completely severed near the shoulder.
Her death was the third fatality associated with Tilikum but many trainers believed this not to be the case, as they were not previously informed of the exact details of the incidents. Tilikum took part in the attacking and drowning of 21-year-old Keltie Byrne on February 20, 1991 at Sealand of the Pacific in British Columbia, Canada along with two other orcas (Haida II and Nootka IV). He was solely responsible for the death of Daniel P. Dukes, a 27-year-old man, in SeaWorld Orlando, Florida on July 6, 1999.
Following her death, a ban on trainers entering a pool with an orca was solidified by an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) intervention. On August 23, 2010, SeaWorld was fined US,000 by OSHA for three safety violations, one directly related to her death. SeaWorld filed a series of appeals, seeking to lift the ban and return to water performances but eventually gave up in 2014. Lawmakers in California and the US House of Representatives proposed legislation to phase out orca captivity, and the California Coastal Commission moved in 2015 to ban orca breeding.
