Lioness shot dead to keep public safe

Advanced Search

The story appears on

Page A6

September 10, 2015

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Lioness shot dead to keep public safe

Source: AFP | September 10, 2015, Thursday |

Print Edition

A LIONESS found prowling along a motorway in China after apparently jumping from a lorry was shot dead by police because they said it posed a danger to the public.

How the animal, which is protected, came to be on the highway in east China’s Anhui Province is not clear, but the illegal raising of endangered species is not unusual in China.

Officers took “more than 20 shots” to kill the lioness after deciding that it would take “too long” to obtain a tranquilizer gun, according to a report on anhuinews.com.

The animal was thought to have jumped out of a loosely fastened cage on the lorry and had been hit and slightly injured by another truck, the report said.

Although obviously lame, it kept walking toward a service area, and highway staff used vehicles to set up a roadblock.

“Maybe because she was tired or saw there were too many cars, the lion stopped and laid down,” Zhang Shuke, one of the highway workers, told the website.

A stand-off lasted half an hour before police arrived and decided to shoot the animal because of the danger it posed to the public, the report said.

No one has claimed the lioness, it added, with officials suspecting its owner feared punishment for keeping a protected animal illegally.

Aside from a small population in northwest India, lions are native only to Africa, but the illegal raising of endangered animals can be lucrative in China as some body parts are believed to have curative properties in traditional Chinese medicine.

In March, three lawmakers in the eastern city of Pingdu were found to have been raising at least 11 endangered Siberian tigers after one of the animals jumped to its death from a high-rise building.

Nation

About Us
|
Terms of Use
|
RSS
|
Privacy Policy
|
Contact Us
|
Shanghai Call Center: 962288
|
Tip-off hotline: 52920043

沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
|
互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
|
网络视听许可证：0909346
|
广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
|
增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012

Lioness shot dead to keep public safe

Email this to your friend