Another beautiful girl, killed by a tiger
Fiona Mcclay, whose daughter Sarah was fatally mauled by a tiger four years ago, tells Joan Mcfadden that controls on zoos are still too lax
It is only human to draw parallels between tragedies; to seek patterns and precedents, in an attempt to prevent them happening again. So while Fiona Mcclay has no wish to intrude upon another family’s anguish, ever since she heard zookeeper Rosa King had been fatally mauled by a tiger at a Cambridgeshire wildlife park on Monday, she has been haunted by one thought.
If changes had been made to zoo safety legislation after her own daughter Sarah was killed by a big cat, almost exactly four years ago, could Rosa’s death have been avoided?
“I can’t get away from that question,” says Fiona, 53. “Until Sarah died I knew very little about the regulations concerning zoos, but despite all the publicity over her death nothing has changed. A committee due to go in front of Parliament regarding the lack of centralised regulation of zoos was shelved due to the general election and I have no idea if it will ever happen.”
The Mcclay family clearly have a unique understanding of the King family’s agony, which closely followed the anniversary of Sarah’s death at South Lakes Safari Zoo, on May 24 2013. The 24-year-old had worked at the Dalton-in-furness wildlife park for over two years and lived for her job, having completed her degree in animal conservation at the University of Cumbria.
“We are a family of animal lovers and when Sarah got that job we were thrilled for her,” says her younger sister Lucy, 25. “This is the zoo we went to as children and now she was the big cat keeper – how cool was that?”
Fiona was first alerted to the fact that her daughter’s dream had ended in tragedy by a Facebook message, while on holiday with her sister in Edinburgh – staff at the zoo were urgently trying to contact her, as they didn’t have next-of-kin contact numbers.
“I phoned the police to ask if they knew what had happened and was told Sarah had been seriously injured by a tiger and was unconscious. She had been airlifted to Preston Hospital so we drove there as fast as we could.”
Sarah had been cleaning out a tiger den when she was pounced upon by a Sumatran tiger and dragged back in by her neck.
“We didn’t think it would be so bad,” says Lucy, who raced to her sister’s bedside from university in Wales, with her older brother Stephen, 31. “The things going through our mind were how she’d recuperate from the injuries or scars.”
But before Sarah’s mother or siblings could reach her, she died from her multiple injuries.
The family’s heartbreak was compounded when the zoo’s millionaire owner, David Gill, not only reopened for business the next day, but put out a statement to the press which claimed that Sarah had been at fault, by entering a den she shouldn’t have been in.
“It could have been handled better,” says Lucy, with some understatement. “Even if it had been her fault, that wasn’t the time to say it. Opening the zoo again the next day seemed like total disrespect; he has never been in touch with us or offered his condolences in the four years since it happened.”
The Mcclays had already been bereaved four years before that, when their beloved husband and father, Nick, died suddenly, at 50. Sarah’s death seemed even more impossible to understand, and it took another three years for the truth to come out at the inquest, which revealed that she was in a staff corridor next to the enclosure when the tiger, Padang, burst though a gate with a defective bolt and attacked her.
In June 2016, the zoo was fined £255,000 for health and safety failings.
“People ask me how I carried on but you can’t just stop,” says Fiona, a care assistant who has since moved back to her native West Lothian with Lucy. “Some days I just sit and can’t stop crying and wondering what really happened. What I do know is that Sarah was meticulous and having that implication out there that she was careless and therefore instrumental in her own death was very hard.”
The testimony of a witness at the inquest, who saw the attack, helps a little. “Sarah was bending down and working when the tiger attacked her and I’m convinced that she was unconscious from that moment on.”
Hearing about 34-year-old Rosa’s death hasn’t brought back awful memories – these are with the family every day. But it has strengthened their conviction that the safety of zoos must remain in the spotlight.
Fiona would like to see centralised legislation (local authorities vary enormously in their specialist knowledge on dangerous animals) with major penalties for failures to adhere to it; not to mention the power for police or inspectors to shut a zoo instantly if there are any safety issues.
“We all assume zoos must be safe, for the animals, the keepers and visitors,” she says. “However, we’ve discovered that there’s no transparency or consistency. One example came up at the inquest: a policeman did an unannounced check at South Lakes and discovered there weren’t enough staff holding shotgun licences on duty with the Category 1 animals – the most dangerous. You would think that meant the zoo had to close immediately until the situation was rectified, but the policeman didn’t have the power to shut it down – all he could do was advise them this was unacceptable and give them 28 days to sort it out. That can’t be right.”
South Lakes was denied a licence this March after it emerged 486 animals died there between January 2013 and September 2016. But in early May, it was granted one after being taken over by new management.
Cambridgeshire Police has launched a joint investigation with the council into Rosa King’s “unexplained death” at Hamerton Zoo Park. Meanwhile, an online campaign to stop the tiger that killed her being put down has attracted almost 800 signatures, with a target of 1,000 before it is delivered to the RSPCA.
The Mcclays never clamoured for the death of the cat that killed Sarah – though he was put down due to old age, last year – or the closure of the zoo. “We are a family of animal lovers and well aware that zoos serve a conservation purpose; the children grew up with all sorts of creatures in the house,” says Fiona.
“But these are wild beasts, no matter how much we anthropomorphise them. Zoos need to be strictly legislated, not just for the animals but for the keepers and all the people who enjoy seeing them.”
Campaigning has proved a distraction, to some extent, though Fiona feels it has had little effect; “I feel like the lone voice in the wilderness – and now this has happened again.”
The family are looking forward to Lucy’s wedding, this Christmas, but there is no denying the pain her sister’s absence will bring. Not least as Sarah’s teenage sweetheart, David – the pair had been together since they were 16 – will be there.
“Lucy will be such a beautiful bride but Sarah should be there as her bridesmaid and it breaks my heart that she won’t be getting married,” says Fiona. “Stephen became a dad to my lovely grandson 20 months ago; even that joy was tinged with the sadness of knowing Sarah never got the chance to be a mother.”
The close family find some comfort in knowing that Sarah’s too-short life was spent doing what she loved. “But it’s not enough,” says Fiona. “Another beautiful girl has been killed by a tiger. We know the agony her family are going through, but we shouldn’t be the only ones asking how these tragedies could be avoided.”
‘Zoos need to be strictly legislated, not just for the animals but for the keepers’