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Solo Zoo Visitors Evacuated After Lion Gets Loose and Kills Camel
Hangga Brata | February 01, 2012

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marko1
2:12pm Feb 1, 2012

Poor camel....All the animals depend on the safety of thier care takers... Accidents like this should be almost impossible to happen!

watatita
1:47pm Feb 1, 2012

Hmm.. do they actually feed the lion? Just wondering.. could be another example of human error.

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Solo, Central Java. Visitors were sent scurrying on Tuesday after a lion escaped from its cage and killed a camel at Taru Jurug Zoo in Solo, an official said.

“The preliminary information says that a camel was killed, with serious wounds to the stomach and neck, leaving five other camels in the collection,” said the zoo’s director, Lilik Kristianto

“We will determine the chronology of the case,” he added.

He said the incident was believed to be the result of human error, after a zoo worker failed to securely lock the lion’s enclosure. It was not clear if the zoo had already identified the employee.

“Human error is behind the escape of the lion from its cage. We checked and there was no damage to the cage door,” he said.

It took about 90 minutes for officials from the Solo offices of forestry and agriculture and the Nature Conservation Office to shoot the lion with a tranquilizer dart. The big cat was found inside the camel enclosure.

Lilik said the killing of the camel marked the first such incident at the zoo and vowed to punish the negligent employee, but added that he would wait for the results of an investigation into the incident.

One zoo visitor, 8-year-old Aldo, said he saw the lion cross over from his cage to the camel enclosure about 20 meters away. He said he saw the lion immediately attack a camel there.

“I was keeping my mother company while she worked at her kiosk in the canteen area, and this male lion suddenly was running and jumped into the camel’s
enclosure,” Aldo said.

He said that zoo employees immediately evacuated visitors and zoo workers.

Head of the Jebres City Police, Chief Comr. I Wayan Sudita, said the zoo alerted the police, who temporarily closed down the zoo and ensured that everyone had been evacuated.

“There were no injuries reported,” he said.

The police, he said, had opened their own investigation into the incident.

Taru Jurug Zoo was first established as a park in 1975 and covers 14 hectares of land.

It was turned into a zoo after the land for the city’s only zoo, Sriwedari Zoo, was appropriated for an extension of the Sriwedari public park. The animals from Sriwedari Zoo were moved to Taru Jurug Zoo.