Last week, about 15 attendees at the Jamaica Zoo in Lacovia, St Elizabeth bore witness to a horrific incident in which an unidentified zookeeper had his finger bitten off the bone by a caged lion.
The occurrence took place on Friday afternoon when the zookeeper made a playful attempt to entertain his onlookers by sticking his hand into the animal's cage and stroking its mane. As the zookeeper's fingers slowly made their way down to the lion's mouth, the zookeeper gallantly yelled out, "C'mon! Come!" To that, the lion quickly turned its head and bit down on the zookeeper's finger.
"Ah f*ck," shouted the zookeeper. "F*ck!"
Surprisingly enough, not a single person on hand rushed to help the zookeeper pry his finger away from the lion, as many of them simply pulled out their camera phones so that they could record it.
"When it happened, I thought it was a joke," recalled a witness. "I didn't think it was serious. I didn't realize the seriousness of it, because it's their job to put on a show. Obviously, when he fell to the ground, everybody realized it was serious. Everybody started to panic."
The Jamaican man did manage to pull his hand from the clutches of the lion's mouth, but when he did so, one of his fingers was reportedly missing a limb and all of its skin. The incident has since gone viral, which has prompted the Jamaican Zoo to issue a statement indicating that despite the risky behavior of their contracted worker, they were doing everything in their power to assist him during his recovery process.
"The actions displayed in a video by a contractor to Jamaica Zoo, is tragic and do not represent the safety procedures and policies that must be adhered to at all times at Jamaica Zoo," the statement read. "It is an unfortunate event that should never have happened, and we the family of Jamaica Zoo are doing everything to assist the gentleman in moving forward."
The video contains sensitive footage. Scroll up to watch.
Source: MSN
