Lion kills woman interning at Calif. sanctuary (bird, coyote, mouse)

[MaggieZ]

they could have tranquilized it or lured it away with food to get at her body...the lion's not at fault no matter what, it is a wild animal..poor lion..

[Woof]

They didn't shoot it because they figured the lion was at fault, Maggie, it wasn't a punishment. They needed to access the woman right away.

[MaggieZ]

I understand that but still, I hope they check into what happened and try to prevent it ..that lion was brought there by humans..so humans need to do what they can to secure safety for the animals and the humans who care for them.

[Huckleberry3911948]

sierra club and the zoo's have programmed us to believe wild animals are pets.

[thedwightguy]

Working with any large animal stuff happens fast. We just had an incident at the Calgary Zoo with a gorilla in the food prep area, apparently via an open door. I believe this involves a new person and though the design is first class it still relies on what we call in safety a high level of "area awareness".

In another zoo incident a food prop knife was left in the gorilla compound and they found it. Fortunately the news was good in both these incidents but shows how fast things can go wrong.

Even with large domestic animals like my bulls I'm never between a wall and their 20 inch wide forehead. I was thrown so high in the air one time I had time to think what I was going to do......once I started to come back down. Curly the bull was eating grass by then and had forgotten all about it.

[MissNM]

The staff at the sanctuary should have been trained to use a tranquilizer gun and tranquilized the lion immediately.

By the time police and EMTs had arrived, the lion could have been out.

Such a sad situation all the way around. A young woman lost her life - had she lived, she would have been devastated to learn that lion lost its life also.

[eyewrist]

Originally Posted by Woof

Sheesh ..... it takes time to tranquilize an animal, and they didn't know if the woman was still alive. It's not like they can stay off at a distance and say, "She doesn't look like she's moving, therefore she must be dead. Well somebody go find a tranquilizer gun, we can let the lion play with her for a while!"

Go find one? Hell, there should be one near by like we have fire extinguisher every 10'. Plus why let a intern go in a cage without supervision anyway, she only been there two months. This is a exotic wild animal, we heard of enough times lions "attacking" people and anyway he was sitting next to her not mauling her or feeding on her..he just wouldn't move. Go lure him with a bucket of ribeye steaks why don't you.

[Clark Fork Fantast]

[quote=MissNM;28595831]The staff at the sanctuary should have been trained to use a tranquilizer gun and tranquilized the lion immediately.

By the time police and EMTs had arrived, the lion could have been out.

[quote]

According to a Google search it takes about 10 minutes for a tranquilizer dart to work, with large animals even longer. Imagine the damage the lion could have done to the young woman in 10 minutes, had she still been alive. Nobody knew at the time that she was already gone. So of course they had to shoot.

[Woof]

Originally Posted by eyewrist

Go find one? Hell, there should be one near by like we have fire extinguisher every 10'. Plus why let a intern go in a cage without supervision anyway, she only been there two months. This is a exotic wild animal, we heard of enough times lions "attacking" people and anyway he was sitting next to her not mauling her or feeding on her..he just wouldn't move. Go lure him with a bucket of ribeye steaks why don't you.

Sure, a loaded tranquilizer gun every 10' at a sanctuary, that makes lots of sense. And as Clark notes, it takes a while for them to work even if the load is the right amount for that animal. And yeah, he's just made a fresh kill but maybe he'll want some stale food from the kitchen instead, and immediately.

Folks, try to spend at least a minute or two thinking things over before posting. If you were attacked by an animal, would you want everyone standing around pointing a finger of blame and not helping as the animal mauls you?

[Woof]

By the way, the cat wasn't just sitting there when it was shot:

The lion broke Hanson's neck, then played with her body "much the way a cat would play with a mouse," the coroner said.
'Did not suffer'
"We determined that she died of a broken neck," Hadden said. "There were other scratch and bite injuries, which were all postmortem. The young lady did not suffer."


Read more: Coroner: Lion broke out of cage - SFGate