Longtime Zookeeper Dies Days After Leopard Attack

A longtime zookeeper at a safari park in the Netherlands died Tuesday from injuries she suffered when she was attacked by a leopard in its enclosure on Saturday. The Beekse Bergen Safari Park said in a statement that the woman, whose name has been withheld in accordance with Dutch privacy law, had passed away after she suffered serious wounds to her head and neck while working in an enclosure with two male Persian leopards, reports the AP. The woman began working at the zoo when she was 17 and spent nearly all of her 40-year career there, and an investigation is underway to determine why the woman was in the enclosure with the leopards.

Zoo staff are typically not permitted to be in the same space as predatory animals, and NL Times reports there is no CCTV footage of the area where the attack occurred. It adds the leopards were inside the enclosure due to severe weather the previous night, a fact that had reportedly been communicated to the staff. According to the zoo, the woman was able to alert colleagues via a walkie-talkie that she had been hurt. An ambulance and a trauma helicopter were dispatched to the park at around 11am local time on Saturday. The woman underwent emergency surgery, but her condition worsened Sunday evening and the zoo previously said they did not expect her to survive.