Brussels 17.10.2024 During morning hours, October 16, the director of the Yalta Zoo Skazka LLC and the manager of the lion’s park, Leokadia Perevalova, died under tragic circumstances in the Taigan Safari Park, Crimea. The owner of the Crimean zoos, Oleg Zubkov, commented on the employee’s death, and informed that an investigation has begun.

“Today, while performing her duties servicing the predatory animals of the Taigan Lion Park, a structural division of the Yalta Zoo Skazka, an employee of our zoo, Leokadia Vladimirovna Perevalova, died,” the businessman reported.

According to him, the woman had worked at Taigan for 18 years. She started out as a simple worker caring for animals, but her hard work and professional qualities allowed her to take the post of director of the Yalta Zoo Skazka LLC and the position of manager of the Taigan Lion’s Park.

Oleg Zubkov describes her as the most experienced employee, who knew the “biographies of all the lions and tigers,” and trained other employees how to handle predatory animals.

“What happened and what caused it is being investigated by the relevant bodies The employees who discovered the remains, unfortunately, could no longer provide any assistance. Since the lions simply tore it apart… We see that when cleaning the enclosure, the transition damper from the outer enclosure to the inner enclosure, where the room was being cleaned, was not closed. How did this happen, why didn’t Leokadia Vladimirovna close this damper… it’s unlikely that anyone could have opened it, the animals certainly couldn’t, and there were no strangers in the space where the lions live. Perhaps the human factor, forgetfulness, played a role,” the entrepreneur suggested.

Preliminary, death occurred between 9 and 10 a.m., Oleg Zubkov specified. He extended his condolences to all who new and loved Leokadia, due to her videos depicting life of big cats in the Crimea safari park.

World
Lions maul worker to death as she goes to clean cages at safari park, Crimea officials say
Updated on: October 16, 2024 / 1:34 PM EDT / CBS/AFP

A group of lions mauled a zookeeper to death at one of Europe’s largest big-cat parks on Wednesday after a door inside their enclosure was left unlocked, investigators in Crimea said.

The mauling occurred at the Taigan safari park on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula, one of the largest breeding grounds for lions in Europe and home to around 60 of the predators.

“A criminal case has been opened over the death of an employee at the Taigan lion park as a result of a predator attack,” the Moscow-installed Investigative Committee of Crimea and Sevastopol said in a statement.

The employee who had worked at the park for almost 17 years died after she “went to clean a cage with three lions, without shutting the bolt of a door between two rooms of the enclosure,” investigators said.