What will his first day back at work be like?
Will protests
greet Walter Palmer, the American dentist vilified worldwide for killing a
prized African lion, when he returns to his Bloomington, Minnesota, practice
Tuesday?
Or will he slip
in with little fanfare?
Palmer's office
reopened several weeks ago without him and now he's decided the time is right
for him to start back to work.
"I'm a
health professional," Palmer told The Associated Press and the
Minneapolis Star Tribune in
a weekend interview. "I need to get back to my staff and my patients, and
they want me back. That's why I'm back."
Police plan to
keep an eye on developments at the dental practice, but no officers will be on
hand.
"We still
have a security camera out in the lot there," Bloomington Police Deputy
Chief Mike Hartley told the AP and Star Tribune.
Palmer has kept a low profile during the six weeks since he was
identified by British media as the big-game hunter who killed Cecil the lion
near Zimbabwe'sHwange National
Park. Cecil was killed in early July.
"I've been
out of the public eye seeing family and friends," he said, denying he was
in hiding.
"This has
been especially hard on my wife and my daughter," he told the AP and Star
Tribune. "They've been threatened in the social media, and again ... I
don't understand that level of humanity to come after people not involved at
all."
To say Cecil's death made the dentist a wanted man is putting it
mildly.
Social media
groaned under the hashtag #WalterPalmer.
"A poor
excuse of a human being," "A killer" and "Satan" were
just a few of the Twitter insults hurled in his direction.
Celebrities like
model Cara Delevingne, actress Alyssa Milano and TV host Sharon Osbourne -- who
have a combined total of 8.39 million followers -- joined in as well.
Killing Cecil
The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said in July that Cecil was lured out
of the national park and shot with a compound bow.
"I had no idea
that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a
study until the end of the hunt," Palmer said late July in a statement.
"I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a
legal hunt."
In Sunday's interview,
Palmer said Cecil's tracking collar could not be seen at night when the hunt
took place. It was buried in his mane.
The dentist also said
it's not illegal to take a collared lion.
Two Zimbabweans have
been charged in the case, and officials in the African nation say they want
Palmer extradited to face charges.
The dentist has
indicated that he'll cooperate, although he said in a statement that he had yet
to be contacted by anyone about the investigation.
In Sunday's interview
with the AP and Star Tribune, Palmer was joined by attorney Joe Friedberg, who
said he's working as an unpaid consultant to the dentist.
Friedberg said Palmer
"doesn't need a lawyer" until either the Zimbabwean or U.S.
government makes a legal claim.
"There are no
official allegations that he's done anything wrong," Friedberg said.
No comments:
Post a Comment