Lion kills worker at safari park

A Taiwan safari village closed its lion park to the public today after one of the animals attacked and killed a worker, park officials said.

Tang Kuei-nan, 56, had finished painting an enclosure at the Leofoo Village on Friday when he was attacked by a lion, the officials said.

Workers shot a dart at the animal to rescue Tang, but he bled to death on his way to hospital. “When the patient arrived at the hospital, he showed no sign of life anymore, so when we failed to resuscitate him after 30 minutes, we pronounced him dead,” said Shen Chin-han, a doctor at the Minsheng Hospital in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan.

Tang had serious bite marks on the left side of his chest and above his waist, Shen said.

Officials at the park, in the northern town of Kuanhsi, said Tang had taken the wrong route out of the park.

“Tang, a contract worker, didn’t choose the normal safe route to go home but passed through the pen,” Leofoo Village spokeswoman Huang Ching-ying said.

Prosecutors investigating the incident were especially concerned about why Tang apparently didn’t know there was a lion in the pen, she said.

All lions had been moved out of the enclosure in the morning before the painting work began, but the company contracted to do the job apparently let them back in, Huang told cable station ETTV.

“I don’t know why its workers moved our lions to that area without informing us or their colleagues,” Huang said.

The park has locked up the lion in a separate cage as prosecutors investigate the case.