A Volunteer From Carole Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue Was Attacked By A Tiger

Tiger King’s Carole Baskin has just had something terrible sink its claws into her life.

News broke this morning that a longtime volunteer of Baskin’s Florida animal sanctuary Big Cat Rescue (which was featured in Netflix’s “Tiger King”) was attacked by a tiger. The incident reportedly occurred during a morning feeding when the volunteer, who has been working at the Carole Baskin-founded sanctuary for five years, went to feed a tiger named Kimba.

Baskin’s volunteer worker was attacked by a tiger after she noticed it was locked out of a part of its cage.

Reports say that the volunteer saw that the tiger was locked out of a section of its cage where it typically was meant to feed. According to CNN, the volunteer opened the gate where the tiger was locked in and did so without asking a coordinator. The unidentified volunteer reached her arm through the cage to release the second door. According to Baskin’s sanctuary, the move was a break in protocol and ended in the sanctuary’s tiger, Kimba, grabbing hold of the volunteer’s arm According to the sanctuary, the tiger “nearly tore [the arm] off at the shoulder.”

After hearing the attack, another volunteer at the sanctuary ran over and was able to coax the tiger into removing its grip on the arm. “Coworkers attempted to stop the bleeding and save the injured volunteer’s arm before an ambulance arrived about 20 minutes later. Kimba will be placed in quarantine for the next 30 days, Big Cat Rescue said, but ‘was just acting normal due to the presence of food and opportunity,'” CNN reports.

According to the sanctuary, the volunteer remained conscious after the attack and expressed a desire to make sure that Kimba would not be harmed for biting her.

Hillsborough County Fire Rescue told WFTS that it had been called to the scene and confirmed that one person hadbeen taken to the hospital with “serious injuries.”

The volunteer’s attack occurs in the same week that the House of Representatives plans to vote on the Big Cat Public Safety Act.

The act seeks to put an end to the private possession of big cats across the United States. Baskin has been a massive supporter of the bill which also advocates for the proper treatment of young cubs.

“Condemning the practice of politically motivated imprisonment and calling for the immediate release of political prisoners in the Russian Federation and urging action by the United States Government to impose sanctions with respect to persons responsible for that form of human rights abuse,” a portion of the bill states.

Big Cat Rescue and Baskin, who were profiled in the Netflix docuseries “Tiger King,” have stated that the attack on a Big Cat Rescue volunteer “only reinforces why the Big Cat Public Safety Act should be passed.”