An employee at a wildlife and safari park was mauled to death by lions.
According to the Russian Investigative Committee's office located on the peninsula annexed by Russia, a zookeeper, entered the cage at Taigan Park to clean it.
She apparently didn't lock the internal door in the enclosure that separates her from the three lions and they attacked her, the committee said in an official statement.
The park's owner identified the victim as Leokadia Perevalova and called the incident a tragic mistake.
"It is unclear how and why this happened, since the animals could not have done this on their own, and apparently there were no people around," Oleg Zubkov said on his blog.
"The officers who discovered the body, unfortunately, could no longer provide any help, because she was simply been torn to pieces," Zubkov said.
Perevalova worked for the park for nearly 17 years. On Zubkov's Telegram channel, he mourned Perevalova as a "valuable employee" who he referred to as the "soul of our park."
The Moscow-installed Investigative Committee of Crimea and Sevastopol said in a statement that it has opened a criminal case into the death of a person by workplace negligence, the Associated Press reported.
Taigan Park is officially named the Belogorsk Lion Safari-Park Taigan, which is a safari and park in the Bilohirsk Raion of Crimea. It's the largest breeding ground for lions and other large predator mammals in Europe.
According to the park's website, it has 60 lions on its 75 acres. Visitors can watch lions roam freely on about 1 kilometer of elevated walkways.
Russia unilaterally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. It is not recognized as a Russian territory globally as Ukrainian forces continue to fight to take back their land.
