South Lakes Wild Animal Park Worker mauled by tiger

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"PARK CLOSED FRIDAY 7TH JUNE

South Lakes Wild Animal Park will be closed Friday 7th June to enable the staff to pay their respects at the funeral of our colleague and friend Sarah McClay.

The park will reopen at 10am on Saturday 8th June.

We apologise for any inconvenience but thank you all for your support at this time."


The biggest shock to me must be that the park is re-opening the next day in spite of all the latest allegations... why anyone who has read the long list of issues would want to visit the place is beyond me!

BTW am I alone in not being able to post comments on the South Lakes Facebook page?
 
BTW am I alone in not being able to post comments on the South Lakes Facebook page?

Either they have disabled comments, or - as they often do - you have been banned from commenting due to your inconvenient enquiries ;) this has happened to a number of us in the past.
 
The biggest shock to me must be that the park is re-opening the next day in spite of all the latest allegations... why anyone who has read the long list of issues would want to visit the place is beyond me!

BTW am I alone in not being able to post comments on the South Lakes Facebook page?

I've not been able to read the whole thread, because WOW it's a long one :)

I'll start be saying how sorry I feel for Sarah and her family......really dreadful news!

I've been party to a couple of small titbits of inside information about the whole sorry mess. Apparently, the tiger in question is well known amongst the staff for being an absolute psycho, requiring 4 or 5 tranq darts to knock it out, and as such one of the current keepers has said that there is no way that Sarah wouldn't have followed correct safety procedure. That is why the current feeling is allegedly amongst the staff that she sadly took her own life.

The spectacularly bad decision to open the park the very next day wasn't quite as democratic as Gill made it out to be. Several of the staff were so angered by this, that they refused to show up for work. But anyone that follows the park's facebook page will be aware that visitor numbers are all important to Gill, as he is constantly bragging about how many people visited his zoo on certain days.....and let's face it, he's not going to miss out on bank holiday weekend takings, is he?

What strikes me as bizarre and rather sick about the whole mess was how Gill responded to it on Facebook. Any other zoo would have made one statement, and remained very tight-lipped from then on....keeping a low public profile for a few weeks until it became yesterday's news. Gill however decided to respond with a series of childish and bitter rants about it on his facebook group, which only served to crap on the memory of his poor dead keeper. Two days later, it was all "oooo...it's conservation week! Come and play on our bouncy castle!!!" Highly inappropriate I'm sure you'll agree!

The whole thing played out like some bizarre sick soap opera. And all comments were deleted apart from the sycophantic "you do amazing work there" kind of brown-nosing!

I would have made comment myself, but have already been banned from doing so a few months ago when Gill had a rant about how exotics should never be kept by private keepers, as they apparently can't provide the correct housing and care, to which I reminded him that he is a private keeper, and that there are gaping holes in his husbandry standards. (Fennec foxes housed with 2-toed sloths??? Massively different requirements!)

Anyhow, it's business as usual for the park now, all seems to have been brushed aside as just another controversy for them. I'm amazed that Gill has agreed to close for a day for the funeral, but at least he won't be missing out on any weekend takings in this glorious weather eh? I shall be interested to see how much bragging there is about visitor numbers in the coming weeks.
 
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I've not been able to read the whole thread, because WOW it's a long one :)

I'll start be saying how sorry I feel for Sarah and her family......really dreadful news!

I've been party to a couple of small titbits of inside information about the whole sorry mess. Apparently, the tiger in question is well known amongst the staff for being an absolute psycho, requiring 4 or 5 tranq darts to knock it out, and as such one of the current keepers has said that there is no way that Sarah wouldn't have followed correct safety procedure. That is why the current feeling is allegedly amongst the staff that she sadly took her own life.


Even if this is true, I personally feel very uncomfortable with such matters being discussed on this forum. I still consider it highly likely that another member of staff had not followed the correct procedures, i.e. not securing the door properly - but chances are we'll probably never know for sure what happened that day.

What worries me most is how the park carries on as if nothing ever happened. Surely the appropriate authorities should have been making emergency inspections and issuing advice on how to ensure this doesn't happen again? If there are so many concerns about safety of visitors, staff and animals alike and have been for years, I don't understand why the zoo is still open!
 
What are they supposed to do?

Animals need caring for and staff need paying. Not going to happen if the zoo is closed.

As for inspections, the zoo was inspected on the previous Monday and passed everything.

This unfortunate incident whether accident or suicide is the fault of the individual involved. Not the zoo. Or the owner despite personal opinions of him.
 
This unfortunate incident whether accident or suicide is the fault of the individual involved. Not the zoo. Or the owner despite personal opinions of him.

This still has not been proven; the only "evidence" so far in this direction is the vitriolic ramblings of Gill scarcely an hour or two after the keeper died.
 
What are they supposed to do?

Animals need caring for and staff need paying. Not going to happen if the zoo is closed.

As for inspections, the zoo was inspected on the previous Monday and passed everything.

This unfortunate incident whether accident or suicide is the fault of the individual involved. Not the zoo. Or the owner despite personal opinions of him.

Posting a conclusory statement like it was the "fault of the individual involved" and "not the zoo" seems highly inappropriate unless you were an eyewitness to the events. If there were flaws in the facility or its maintenance it may have very well been the fault of the Zoo management. Based on the depictions on this forum and in newspapers regarding David Gill's behavior and character, your exculpatory conclusions, and your forum name of "Satan," I'm left to wonder if you aren't actually David Gill.
 
your exculpatory conclusions, and your forum name of "Satan," I'm left to wonder if you aren't actually David Gill.


No, no, Satan isn't David Gill, his style is too calm and literate, but 'Yorik', who comes on here unpleasantly ranting and raving occassionally almost certainly is.
 
No, no, Satan isn't David Gill, his style is too calm and literate, but 'Yorik', who comes on here unpleasantly ranting and raving occassionally almost certainly is.
I'm still waiting for the Yoriking over us discussing it on here!!!
 
I'm still waiting for the Yoriking over us discussing it on here!!!

I've been waiting for Yorik to raise his head but they're amazingly quiet. Normally so quick to defend the place and suddenly, with all this SL bashing, there's nothing... :rolleyes:
 
I'm sorry, but suicide by tiger? I would think a person who was going to do something that mad and obviously painful would likely be showing some significant signs of unhappiness, depression or outright loopiness in the days / weeks before.
 
I'm sorry, but suicide by tiger? I would think a person who was going to do something that mad and obviously painful would likely be showing some significant signs of unhappiness, depression or outright loopiness in the days / weeks before.

Det Chief Insp Bob Qazi, of Cumbria Police, aid: "It is vitally important that we discover what exactly happened in the big cat enclosure building that led to Sarah coming into contact with the tiger.

"I want to emphasise there is no suggestion of any foul play or any issue of suicide or self-harm from the enquiries we have made and evidence we have."

The issue of suicide has been ruled out, anyone who still wishes to drag this portion of what can only be seen as hurting to the family needs to think very hard about what, how and reason why they say it. As to Mr Gill, we all have a huge "gut" feeling towards his behaviour, demeanor and candour, and is somewhat lacking, immature and childish. The blame game and shifting the blame to suit your own agenda is a fools game...
 
Don't shoot the messenger.....I was merely recounting what has been said by a South Lakes keeper! No more, no less. As far as I'm aware, this is an open forum upon which anyone can comment. If you read things you don't like and it genuinely upsets you, then don't look on threads that cover obviously sensitive issues.
 
Don't shoot the messenger.....I was merely recounting what has been said by a South Lakes keeper! No more, no less. As far as I'm aware, this is an open forum upon which anyone can comment. If you read things you don't like and it genuinely upsets you, then don't look on threads that cover obviously sensitive issues.

Even so, the Police and other Authorities have ruled out suicide, the family have also ruled it out and have stated that they have found such remarks regarding suicide as well as blame to be hurtful. Unless we (every single person posting) were there at that very second, then no one knows, that is why there is a continuing investigation being carried out. What is forthcoming only time will tell however, as to the candour of Mr Gill, then as most, the behaviour of the man speaks for itself.
 
But what I'm saying is, I don't know (or really care) whether she took her own life or not.....was only repeating what one of the keepers said.

And you say the police have ruled it out......depends whether you find the filth all that reliable or not. Of course the family would rule it out!

The only person who really knows was poor Sarah.
 
I've been waiting for Yorik to raise his head but they're amazingly quiet. Normally so quick to defend the place and suddenly, with all this SL bashing, there's nothing... :rolleyes:

Well last time he was on he went into a rage and swore the quite the site, this is what we Americans call a "rage quite". Perhaps he actually did finally rage quite the site for good.

~Thylo:cool:
 
But what I'm saying is, I don't know (or really care) whether she took her own life or not.....was only repeating what one of the keepers said.

And you say the police have ruled it out......depends whether you find the filth all that reliable or not. Of course the family would rule it out!

The only person who really knows was poor Sarah.

I'm not certain that the forum has been at its best on this issue: a witch hunt against Gill, lots of conjecture about something that probably doesn't need such conjecture, intemperate comments from many when the case is possibly sub judice right now.

I'm sure that you don't really mean that you don't care why she died; nor do I think that, on reflection, you would think that your comments about the police and Sarah's family are appropriate in their tone.

Might be time for a number of people to count to ten before posting....
 
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