Vince The Rhino Killed In Paris Zoo: Poachers Sawed Horn Off With Chainsaw In First Ever Attack At A European Park

A rhino at a Paris zoo was shot and killed Monday night by poachers who used a chainsaw to steal his horn. The incident is believed to be the first time that poachers attacked an animal residing in a European zoo.

The five-year-old white rhinoceros named Vince was discovered by workers at the Thoiry Zoo, to the west of the French capital, at 9:30 a.m., Tuesday, Le Parisien reported. He had three bullets in his head while his horn, which can sell for up to $40,000 on the black market, had been sawed off.

“It's a real shock, it's unbelievable to see this on a site like ours,” the zoo’s director told The Local in France.

The poacher, or poachers, might have forced a door open at the back of the zoo before entering a building where the zoo’s three rhinos lived. It's possible the thieves attempted to attack other animals, but did not have time, a source with knowledge of the case told La Parisien.

Investigators said they were still trying to determine what weapon was used to kill the rhino, with the thickness of the animal’s skin proving a hindrance to determining the caliber of the weapon.

Vince was at the zoo for two years, having been brought there along with another young white rhino, Bruce, to join the zoo’s existing rhino, Gracie, according to information on the zoo’s website. Vince was born in September 2012 at Burger’s Zoo in the Netherlands.

The white rhino is second only to the African elephant in terms of size of land mammals. Once on the verge of extinction, there numbers have been successfully raised to more than 20,000 today. However, they are still classified by the World Wildlife Fund as “near-threatened” and poachers have been responsible for killing record numbers in recent years.

There is a channel between France and China for trading rhino horns and there have been a spate of thefts at French museums in recent years. The ivory horn is used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat a range of ailments, including fever and gout. Some also believe that the rhino horn can serve as an aphrodisiac.