South Lakes Safari Zoo fined £255,000 over death of keeper Sarah McClay

A British zoo has been fined for health and safety breaches after one of its employees was killed by a Sumatran tiger.

Sarah McClay, 24, died at South Lakes Wild Animal Park – now known as South Lakes Safari Zoo – in Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria, after she was pounced on by the tiger on 24 May 2013.

The Sumatran tiger, which entered the keeper’s corridor of the zoo’s tiger house through an unlocked gate, left deep puncture wounds in Miss McClay’s neck and body.

Miss McClay suffered "unsurvivable" multiple injuries and was airlifted to hospital where she was formally pronounced dead.

The zoo has been fined £255,000 at Preston Crown Court.

A £42,500 fine was also imposed for health and safety law breaches, which the company admitted, relating to an incident where a zoo keeper fell from a ladder while preparing to feed big cats in July 2014, according to the BBC.

The zoo must also pay £150,000 prosecution costs over the next 10 years.

The company, whose sole director David Gill founded the zoo, entered guilty pleas on Wednesday to contravening health and safety laws on the day of Miss McClay's death.

South Lakes Safari Zoo also pleaded guilty to failing to ensure people not employed at the zoo were not exposed to risk to their health and safety on the date of the tragedy.

The pleas came ahead of a scheduled trial, and the prosecution offered no evidence against Mr Gill, 55, who had faced individual charges on the same allegations, but was formally acquitted.

In September 2014, an inquest jury in Kendal ruled Padang, the Sumatran tiger, was able to attack Miss McClay by entering two open internal sliding gates within the tiger house and then an open door from the tiger’s den that lead on to the corridor.

Systems were in place to at the park to ensure animals and keepers remained separated at all times through indoor and outdoor compartments connected by lockable self-closing doors.

However, two internal sliding gates were also open, which allowed Padang and his female companion, Alisha, to move in and out of a "light den" and a "dark den" to outside the enclosure.

The company accepted its risk assessment did not sufficiently address the risks arising from a failure to maintain the dark den door – labelled in court as “the last line of defence” for the animal keepers.

The company said "a more proactive maintenance and inspection regime" should have been in place to ensure that the door functioned efficiently and that its self-closing mechanism worked properly.

The judge said "it should not have been possible" for the tiger to access the area where Miss McClay was working, adding: "But as a substantially contributory cause as a result of a door-closing mechanism failure, it did."

After the sentencing, Miss McClay's mother Fiona, said: "We can't function yet with a member of our family missing, we have got to learn how to do that and we haven't got to that stage yet."

Additional reporting by Press Association