BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (AP) – A Minnesota dentist who killed Cecil the lion returned to work Tuesday after weeks away, walking silently into his small dental practice, past swarming media and a handful of protesters calling for him to be sent to Zimbabwe to face trial.
Walter Palmer had largely retreated out of the public eye since he was identified as Cecil’s Killer in July, offering little insight into the hunt that catapulted his name onto the world stage until a Sunday interview with The Associated Press in which he defended the kill as legal and announced his plan to return to work.
Some of the uproar bubbled up shortly after sunrise Tuesday as a security guard whisked Palmer inside the clinic, past reporters shouting questions and a protester repeatedly yelling “Extradite Palmer!” Palmer walked from a nearby street where police had blocked off traffic, meeting the guard in the parking lot of his Bloomington practice and rushing through a door covered in messages reading: “Justice for Cecil” and “May you never hunt again.”
The small throng of protesters didn’t match the furor in the days after Palmer was named as Cecil’s killer during a July hunt in Zimbabwe’s vast Hwange National Park, when hundreds gathered to hold vigils for the big cat with the black mane and forced River Bluff Dental to temporarily close. Just a few protesters were on site when he arrived.
The crowd grew to roughly a dozen by midmorning, holding signs calling for an end to trophy hunting and chanting on a megaphone: “We will never falter! Prosecute Walter!”