14 DAY TRIAL // An intern at a zoo in California has been killed in a brutal lion attack, as she was cleaning the feline's enclosure.
ABC details that 24-year-old Dianna Hanson died after her neck was broken. According to Fresno County coroner David Hadden, she did not suffer.
“We think the lion hit her with his paw and that’s what fractured her neck,” Hadden describes. She loved animals, particularly lions and tigers, and was interning for the Cat Haven in Dunlap.
On Wednesday, March 6, she was trying to clean the gated enclosure when she was mauled by a 4-year-old male African lion, which staff have named Cous Cous.
Officials speculated that the gate to the lion's feeding cage had been left open, allowing the animal to escape by lifting it up with its paw.
“[We] cannot confirm or deny which gates were working or which gates weren't working,” Fresno County Sheriff's Lt. Patrick Hanson says.
The cat had been fed prior to the attack, and jumped on the young girl. At the time, she was talking to another member of the zoo staff on the phone.
“The lion had been fed, the young woman was cleaning the large enclosure, and the lion was in the small cage. The gate of the cage was partially open, which allowed the lion called Cous Cous to lift it up with his paw. [...] He ran at the young lady,” Hadden says.
The co-worker went to check on Hanson after the call ended mid-conversation and alerted authorities soon after. A Fresno County sheriff's deputy was forced to shoot the 500-pound lion in order to be able to recover Hanson's body.
“Anybody who works with cats knows that they are wild animals and they can turn even on people closest to them. So I always had this horrible, nagging premonition that I would get a call like this,” her father Paul Hanson says.