50-Year-Old Woman Loses Arm In Horrifying Lion Attack At Popular Australian Zoo

An Australian woman lost an arm after being attacked by a lion at a zoo. According to The Independent, Joanne Cabban, a 50-year-old school teacher, was at Darling Downs Zoo on Sunday when the incident occurred. She was watching animal keepers working in the zoo's carnivore precinct before opening hours when she was attacked. She was airlifted by helicopter to Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital for surgery and is now in a stable condition, the zoo said in a statement.

The zoo staff are cooperating with government workplace safety investigators to determine how the incident happened. The state government confirmed an investigation was underway, per the outlet. 

"Inexplicably, at this stage, one animal grabbed her by one arm and caused severe damage to it," the zoo statement said. "At no stage did this animal leave its enclosure and there was no risk at all to staff members or members of the public," the statement continued.

According to The Guardian, the woman was not a staff member but a "much-loved member" of the zoo's family. Darling Downs zoo owner Steve Robinson said that Cabban, his sister-in-law, was visiting on school holidays, something she has done regularly for 20 years.

The 50-year-old is currently in the hospital and is in stable condition. Workplace Health and Safety Queensland is investigating the incident. Nobody else saw the attack take place, though others were nearby, per the outlet. 

The zoo's owner, Steve Robinson, credited another member of staff with saving Ms Cabban's life. He said that the staff member used his wife's leather belt as a makeshift tourniquet to stop the bleeding, and then applied a thermal blanket before paramedics arrived.

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Mr Robinson said that the incident was not the lion's fault and people should not blame the animal. The animal will not be put down or punished in any way, he said. 

"There's no aggression, and there's no nastiness, anything like that at all. The best we can come up with at this stage is the lion was just playing. Now how she was playing with a human in that circumstance is yet to be determined," Mr Robinson stated. 

He also said that it was the first time an incident like this had happened at the zoo. "That enclosure that we're looking at was one of our original ones. It's been there for 20 years, as I said before, without anything like this happening," he said.