A trainer endured a horrific death as a SeaWorld orca crushed him and ‘violently played with his body.’
Keto, the killer whale, was born in 1995 and spent the entirety of his life in captivity.
He never swam in the ocean, instead, he spent his days entertaining hundreds of people at a water park in Tenerife.
His mother, Kalina, or ‘Baby Shamu,’ was the first orca to be born in a SeaWorld theme park.
Over the years, Keto fathered three calves of his own: Adán, Victoria, and Ula.
He also traveled the world performing, appearing at water parks in San Diego, Ohio, and Texas, before moving to the Canary Islands.
Devastatingly, after Keto’s final move, he carried out a horrific attack on a trainer.
Alexis Martínez, a skilled and experienced trainer, was remembered by his girlfriend as “handsome, generous, and funny.”
The 29-year-old worked closely with marine animals at Loro Parque in Tenerife and was well accustomed to handling massive predators.
Martínez played a key role in leading the marine mammals during rehearsals, but he reportedly had his concerns. According to The Sun, he confided in his girlfriend, warning that “something could happen at any time.”
“My job is especially risky, and I really need to be well rested and ready,” he reportedly said.
Tragically, his fears became reality on Christmas Eve, 2009.
On what at first started as a perfectly normal day, Martínez and Keto – who was owned by SeaWorld – began working on the Christmas show in the training pool.
According to a corporate incident report, the giant orca ‘appeared in a good mood.’
However, Keto would reportedly begin acting unusual.
He apparently failed to perform several of his moves correctly – still seeming calm at this point – while floating on the surface of the pool with the trainer.
Staff have since claimed that on that tragic day, Keto appeared to have deliberately positioned himself between his trainer and the stage.
At this point, the underwater stage call came and Martínez began swimming, with Keto leaning into him.
Another trainer attempted to use the usual control signals that had always worked with the killer whales, but Keto did not respond. Instead, he continued to push Martínez to the bottom of the pool using his rostrum—the beak-like protrusion at the tip of a whale’s mouth.
In his testimony to investigators (via The Sun), Orca Ocean assistant supervisor Rafael Sanchez described the terrifying moment: “The animal in question moved towards him, hit him, and violently played with his body.”
Recognizing the situation was becoming critical, a trainer observing the incident desperately tried additional signals to regain control of the orca.
For a brief moment, it seemed to work.
Keto surfaced and took a breath—but within seconds, he dove back down toward Martínez.
According to The Mirror, onlookers were horrified when Keto resurfaced with the 29-year-old balanced on the tip of his rostrum, his mouth closed. Moments later, Martínez slipped from the orca’s grip and sank to the bottom of the pool.
Trainers urgently tried to lure Keto into another enclosure, but he resisted, reportedly playing with the gate instead.
Martínez’s body was finally recovered after a net was released into the pool, prompting Keto to swim into a neighboring tank.
Tragically, the 29-year-old had suffered horrific injuries, including internal bleeding.
Martínez’s post-mortem stated he had ‘died due to grave injuries sustained by an orca attack, including multiple compression fractures, tears to vital organs, and the bite marks of the animal on his body.’
Keto, who passed away in 2024, was later described as ‘frustrated and dangerous’ by The Whale Sanctuary Project.
Just months after the death of Alexis Martínez, SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau would die at age 44 after a long and brutal attack from her orca partner, Tilikum.
Traditionally, orcas are not dangerous to humans. There are no documented cases of an orca intentionally harming a human in the wild, as per Business Insider.
The name ‘killer whale’ derives from ‘killer of whales,’ not killers of people, points out Discover Wildlife.
