Marine animal trainer Jessica Radcliffe was attacked and killed by an orca in front of a large crowd.
The claim was allegedly influenced by a real event from 2010 in which an orca trainer was killed on the job. However, there is no truth to the claim in question nor does there appear to be a real person named Jessica Radcliffe employed as a marine trainer. Further, the marine park named in some of the claims does not exist.
A rumor circulated online in August 2025 claiming an orca — also known as a killer whale — fatally attacked a marine trainer named Jessica Radcliffe in front of a crowd. According to the story, Radcliffe was living out her childhood dreams training killer whales.
Users shared the rumor online as early as January 2025 in a YouTube video (archived) that had more than 1.5 million views.
In April 2025, a different YouTube channel titled “Animal Quests” posted an alternate video telling the same tale, receiving more than 500,000 views as of this writing. The description of the video said Radcliffe “was a top-tier marine trainer. Passionate. Skilled. Beloved by the whales she worked with. But on one tragic February afternoon, in front of a packed audience, everything changed.”
Voice-over narration in the video stated the incident occurred at “Bluecrest Marine Park,” while the purported photographs featured in the video depicted “Sealland.”
The rumor circulated widely on social media platforms such as Facebook (archived) and X (archived), with some users posting versions of the story accompanied by gruesome images and video allegedly showing the trainer’s death. A video purporting to show the entire incident also was shared widely on TikTok in August 2025, which led Snopes readers to ask about its veracity.
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Other Facebook users (archived) shared the same claim. Some of those posts featured links in top comments leading to articles hosted by advertisement-filled WordPress blogs.
However, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no news media outlets reporting about a marine trainer named Jessica Radcliffe being killed by an orca during a performance. Prominent news media outlets would have widely reported this story if true.
Rather, the claim appeared to be generated using artificial intelligence and used to earn advertising revenue on YouTube as well as the websites linked from the aforementioned Facebook posts. The story amounted to fiction, though its inspiration appeared to be taken from actual events.
According to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, on Feb. 24, 2010, a SeaWorld trainer named Dawn Brancheau was killed as a result of an orca pulling her off a platform and into a pool, where she “sustained grievous injuries” and remained underwater “for approximately 45 minutes.” Numerous media outlets covered her death, including The Associated Press, CBS News and NPR.
The alleged Radcliffe videos circulating on YouTube admitted in their descriptions, “This video contains emotionally intense material and dramatized reenactments based on real patterns and events in marine parks.” Another YouTube video spreading the rumor stated, “We dig deep into the life and legacy of Jessica Radcliffe — a fictional trainer based on real-world events — and the orca named Titan, whose deadly attack shook the world and forever changed the marine park industry.”
Further, we found no evidence of an orca trainer named Jessica Radcliffe, alive or dead, nor the existence of a marine park called Bluecrest Marine Park or Sealland. The description of these videos claim they were created using “altered or synthetic content” and that “sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated.”
An examination of the viral video and images shown in the YouTube videos found multiple indications of images and text generated by artificial intelligence.
For example, text shown in an image included in a YouTube video allegedly depicting Radcliffe and other trainers standing on the edge of the pool is muddled, an obvious sign of AI generation. It is most obviously present on the text on the central figure’s wetsuit and the park sign in the background. In addition, the text depicted on the sign changes throughout the video.
(@AnimalAttacksHQ on YouTube)
Another image purportedly showing Radcliffe standing between two jumping killer whales is physically impossible based on her positioning. In order for this image to be authentic, the trainer would either be miraculously floating in deep water to accommodate the size of the orcas or the orcas would be balancing on their drastically undersize tails in very shallow water.
Furthermore, the same image depicted distorted and repeated crowd members in the upper right, another surefire sign of AI generation.
(@AnimalAttacksHQ on YouTube)
Finally, keen-eyed viewers will note that in the viral TikTok video, the artificially generated Radcliffe’s limbs frequently morph positions throughout and her torso even blends with her purported attacker at various points.
The false story about the fictional Radcliffe was just another example of AI-generated content being used to generate revenue and engagement.
For further reading, Snopes has fact-checked a wide variety of content created with AI, including reports that comedian and late-night host Stephen Colbert adopted a girl who lost her parents in the Texas floods and that Elvis Presley sang a duet with a terminally ill boy on stage.