Wildlife sanctuary workers know the risks of working around large predators like the one that got loose and killed a young woman Dec. 30 at a facility in North Carolina.
Alexandra Black, 22, had interned at the center in Burlington less than two weeks, when during a routine cage cleaning, the male lion escaped a locked enclosure and attacked her. It had to be put down so the young woman's body could be recovered.
"I don't know if, in this situation, she was supposed to be there," said B.J. Auch of the Cedar Cove Feline Sanctuary in Louisburg, Kansas. "My first reaction was, what was an intern that had only been there a couple of weeks doing, cleaning the lion's enclosure in the first place?"
The mauling in North Carolina remains under investigation.
Big cats can always be dangerous regardless of how well a handler thinks he or she knows the animal, Auch said.
"We don't ever go in with our big animals," Auch said. "I don't think (the North Carolina workers) did in this situation -- I don't think they meant to."
Cedar Cove is regulated by the USDA, which conducts strict inspections every year.