This shocking footage shows an elephant being speared by a handler at the same Thai park where a Scottish tourist was killed – taken just a week before his death.
Gareth Crowe, 36, was trekking with the elephant alongside Eilidh Hughes, 16, with a local guide on the tropical island of Ko Samui when it fatally gorged him on Monday.
Witnesses said just before the attack the elephant – known as Golf – was upset and refused to follow the instructions of the mahout who hit him several times with a hook.
Today footage emerged of a guide spearing and poking a docile and calm elephant with a hooked stick, apparently at the same park just seven days earlier.
It appears to show the worried elephant backing away from the handler, who responds by sharply stabbing the animal in the face.
It was taken by shocked tourist Kelly Ackerman, 24, who was walking past the area used by Island Safari Tour Co on January 25.
She claims she posted the footage to the company’s Facebook page, airing concerns about the treatment of the elephants, but the message was deleted.
Kelly, a civil servant, from Chichester, West Sussex, said: “I think that that is why the animals get aggressive, because of the way they are being treated.
“We were trekking to the waterfall and had to walk past the elephants.
“When we were walking back I saw the baby elephants being bathed, and I noticed the guy was being quite aggressive, shouting at the elephant, so I started to film.
“I just didn’t like the look of what he was doing. He had a spear with a bullhook on the end and it was sharp.
“He started all of a sudden spearing the elephant with the stick.
“The elephant wasn’t doing anything. He just started spearing him for no reason. It was quite upsetting.
“The elephants were also kept in terrible conditions, in really tiny enclosures. Knowing what has happened now, it’s even more shocking.
“Hopefully this can raise awareness of how they treat animals there and for people to stop paying these places to ride them.”
Mr Crowe, from Isle of Islay, Scotland, was on the island with his partner Catherine Hughes, 42, mother to Eilidh and her brother Mark, who decided not to go on the trek.
Witnesses said the mahout – the elephant’s handler – climbed down to take photos of the tourists when it hit him with its trunk and stabbed him in his body with a tusk.
The elephant is then said to have thrown the father and daughter off his back before trampling the man and stabbing him in the chest with a tusk, killing him instantly.
The teenage girl is said to have escaped with minor injuries in the fall as the elephant ran off into the forest.