A group of lions mauled a zookeeper to death at one of Europe’s largest big-cat parks on Wednesday after the door inside their enclosure was left open, investigators said.
The attack took place in the Taigan Safari Park on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, one of the largest breeding grounds for lions in Europe and home to about 60 hunters.
“A criminal case has been opened on the death of an employee in the Taigan Lion Park as a result of a poacher attack,” the Moscow-established Investigative Committee of Crimea and Sevastopol said in a statement.
Investigators said the employee, who had worked at the park for nearly 17 years, died when she “went to clean a cage with three lions, without closing the bolt of the door between two rooms of the enclosure”.
Park owner Oleg Zubkov identified the victim as chief zookeeper Leokadia Perevalova and called the incident a “tragic” mistake.
“It is not clear how or why this happened, as the animals could not have done anything like this on their own, and there were apparently no people around,” he said in a statement on his blog.
“Unfortunately the workers who discovered the body were no longer able to provide any assistance because it had been dismembered,” he said.
On his Telegram channel, Zubkov praised Perevalova as a “valuable employee” who was “the soul of our park”, and said that “the human factor of amnesia played a role”.
“Unfortunately when I got there there was nothing I could do to help. (They) are top hunters and they don’t forgive mistakes,” he said.
Investigators said a criminal case has been registered for the death of a person due to negligence at workplace.
The massive 70-acre park on the site of a former military base was opened to visitors in 2012.
Authorities closed the zoo for a month in December 2019 after Zubkov was accused of feeding expired feed to the animals, although he denied the allegation.
He accused Crimea’s Russian-established authorities of pressuring him to “bankrupt” his business and deliberately halting his projects after seizing power in 2014.
Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014 but is internationally recognized as part of Ukraine.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)