In a statement, the Caswell County Sheriff in Burlington, North Carolina, said that it had responded on December 30, 2018 to a report “of a conservator Center employee who had been attacked and killed by a lion.” The tragedy happened at The Conservators’ Center in Burlington, North Carolina. The lion was a male named Matthai.

According to the Sheriff’s Department, the victim was Alexandra Black, a native of New Palestine, Indiana, and a recent graduate. She “was a college intern and had been employed at the Conservator Center for approximately two weeks,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a news release.

Black was deeply devoted to the care of animals, her social media pages indicate. The center where she died describes itself as “a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to reconnecting people with #wildlife through #education and #conservation.”

It’s not clear how the lion was able to get out of its locked enclosure, but it attacked Black during a routine cleaning. According to the Center’s website, it is home to 15 lions “many of whom arrived as part of a USDA placement after the Ohio State Fish and Wildlife Service seized animals from poor living conditions in 2004. Of the 10 lions who arrived at the Center in 2004, three were pregnant and gave birth to over 10 cubs.” Matthai no longer appears on the website.

According to CBS News, the animal was previously described on the website as “a little nervous by nature” but “an enthusiastic recipient of attention from the people he knows best.” 

According to the sheriff’s office, “while a husbandry team, led by a professionally trained animal keeper, was carrying out a routine enclosure cleaning, one of the lions somehow left a locked space and entered the space that the humans were in and quickly killed one person. It is unclear at this time how the lion left the locked enclosure. Several attempts to tranquilise the lion failed. The lion was shot and killed by Caswell County deputies in order to allow officials to retrieve the victim.”

“This is the worst day of my life. We’ve lost a person. We’ve lost an animal. We have lost the faith in ourselves a little today,” said Executive Director of the Conservators Center, Mindy Stinner, to ABC 11.

CBS News