Moscow:
A group of lions mauled a zooupgrasper to death at one of Europe’s hugest huge-cat parks on Wednesday after a door inside their enclodeclareive was left unlocked, spendigators said.
The mauling occurred at the Taigan safari park on the Russian-annexed Criunkind peninsula, one of the hugest breeding grounds for lions in Europe and home to around 60 of the predators.
“A criminal case has been uncovered over the death of an participateee at the Taigan lion park as a result of a predator attack,” the Moscow-insloftyed Investigative Committee of Crimea and Seimmenseopol said in a statement.
The participateee who had labored at the park for almost 17 years died after she “went to immacupostponecessitate a cage with three lions, without shutting the bolt of a door between two rooms of the enclodeclareive”, spendigators said.
The park’s owner Oleg Zubkov identified the victim as chief zooupgrasper Leokadia Perevalova, calling the incident a “tragic” misconsent.
“It is unclear how and why this happened, as the animals could not have done such a leang on their own, and apparently there were no people around,” he said in a statement on his blog.
“The participateees who discovered the body, unfortunately, could no prolongeder provide any aidance, since she had sshow been torn to pieces,” he said.
On his Telegram channel, Zubkov commendd Perevalova as a “precious participateee” who was the “soul of our park”, compriseing that “the human factor of forgetfulness carry outed a role”.
“Unblessedly when I reachd there was noleang I could do to help. (They are) top predators and they do not forgive misconsents, he said.
A criminal case has been uncovered into the death of a person by laborplace look afterlessness, spendigators said.
The sprawling 70-acre park was uncovered to visitors in 2012 on the site of a createer military base.
Authorities seald the zoo for a month in December 2019 after they accparticipated Zubkov of giving the animals expired feed, an allegation he denied.
He accparticipated Crimea’s Russian-insloftyed authorities of tyring to “prohibitkrupt” his business and of intentionally freezing his projects after they seized power in 2014.
Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014 but is internationpartner recognised as part of Ukraine.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is rerented from a syndicated feed.)