Horrific last moments of zookeeper savaged to death by tiger
Safari park owner fined £250k
A ZOOKEEPER screamed in terror when she realised a giant tiger had slipped through a security gate and was about to maul her to death, a court heard.
Sarah McClay, 24, assumed she was safe as she crouched with her back turned to the tiger den while doing routine cleaning at South Lakes Safari Zoo in Cumbria.
But a visiting family watched helplessly as they saw 300lb Padang, who was on a weekly ‘starve’ day, clamp his jaws around her neck while another tiger clawed at her legs. Moments later, they saw she had stopped screaming and the predator had killed her.
The father shouted for help as Glasgow-born Miss McClay was dragged back through the tiger’s ‘dark den’ and ‘light den’ into the open enclosure on May 24, 2013.
As soon as the alarm sounded zoo owner and founder David Gill, 55, raced to the enclosure and fired a shotgun near the animal to ward it back into its den, Preston Crown Court heard.
Sitting in court, Miss McClay’s family heard prosecutor Nigel Lawrence describe how a colleague had briefly left Miss McClay in the tiger house while they were cleaning and feeding the jaguars in a corridor in the tiger house.
Lockable self-closing doors should have protected her but Miss McClay was unaware the mechanism on the ‘last line of defence had not worked properly’.
By the time emergency crews arrived she had suffered ‘unsurvivable’ multiple injuries and her body was airlifted to hospital.
The family asked for the critically-endangered Sumatran tiger not to be put down – but Padang was put to sleep due to his age earlier this year. In the aftermath of the accident, Mr Gill infuriated the family by blaming ‘keeper error’, saying Miss McClay had made a ‘tragic mistake’.
But yesterday, his company was fined £255,000 after admitting failing to ensure the door was working properly. It must also pay £150,000 prosecution costs.
Sentencing, Mr Justice Turner said ‘it should not have been possible’ for the tiger to gain access to where Miss McClay was working.
Mr Lawrence also read out statements from Miss McClay’s family describing how their lives had been shattered by the loss of the ‘young, intelligent, bubbly’ keeper.
Working with tigers at the park in Dalton-in-Furness had been Miss McClay’s dream job since the age of six, her family said.
Her mother Fiona told how her ‘life ended’ when her daughter died and that she is now unable to connect with her two children emotionally because she is scared something will happen to them.
The 52-year-old from Linlithgow, West Lothian, said she even became upset while holding hands with her grandchild because it reminded her that her daughter would never be the mother she always wanted to be. Miss McClay’s brother Stephen wrote: ‘Christmas is now different, birthdays are now different, but it seems nothing has changed for South Lakes Safari Zoo.’
The zoo admitted failing to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of employees.
It was also fined £42,500 for breaching health and safety rules when a zookeeper fell from a ladder while trying to feed big cats in July 2014.