Dianna Hanson Killed By Lion While Interning At Cat Haven Animal Sanctuary

Dianna Hanson was fatally wounded by an African lion inside its cage on Wednesday, at Cat Haven, an animal habitat in Dunlap, Calif., where she was interning.

Hanson, 24, was found barely alive inside the 4-year-old male lion’s enclosure at around 12:30 p.m. yesterday. It is not immediately known why Hanson was in the cage with the lion named Cous Cous, or what had caused his attack on her.

A fellow employee at Cat Haven attempted to get Cous Cous away from Hanson inside the enclosure, but was ultimately unsuccessful. With the lion’s resistance to move and the awareness that time was running out, a Fresno County sheriff’s deputy shot the animal dead.

"The lion was shot and killed per our safety protocols," Dale Anderson, founder and executive director of Project Survival said Wednesday, according to Yahoo.

Since Hanson’s tragic death, her father has talked at length about his daughter’s passion for animals, and for the internship that ultimately took her life. Recalling a visit to Cat Haven, Paul Hanson wrote on Facebook, "Once there, she gave me the tour and showed me all the big cats there with which she would be working. Of course, Dianna being Dianna, her favorites were the tiger and the lion … who killed her today."

"Anybody who works with cats knows that they are wild animals and they can turn even on people closest to them. So I always had this horrible, nagging premonition that I would get a call like this," Paul Hanson told ABC News Wednesday night.

Cous Cous had called Cat Haven home since he was 8 weeks old. Cat Haven, founded in 1993, is a 100-acre facility that serves as the home to tigers, leopards, cheetahs, lions and other big cats. Run by Project Survival, it sits just west of King’s Canyon National Park near Fresco, Calif. The sanctuary is closed today, while a necropsy is performed on the lion to help determine the cause of Dianna Hanson’s untimely death.

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