Czech man, Michal Prasek mauled to death by pet lion that he kept in the backyard for illegal breeding. A series of ongoing instances before fatal attack.
A man has been mauled to death by a pet lion he kept in his back garden in the Czech Republic.
Michal Prasek’s body was found in the pen of the nine-year-old big cat by his father, who said the enclosure was locked from the inside. The son purportedly used the lion for illegal breeding.
Prasek had kept the lion for breeding along with a lioness, which lived in a separate cage Czech news website iDNES reported.
The cats were shot dead by police called to the scene in the village of Zdechov, in Vsetin District in the Zlin Region the bbc reported.
A police spokesperson told local media that the shootings were ‘absolutely necessary for them to get to the man’.
Michal Prasek Czech lion owner: ‘It was just my fault that the lion attacked me’.
The lion mauling follows a 2012 incident when Prasek required surgery after being attacked while feeding a lion while living in Slovakia.
‘It was just my fault that the lion attacked me,’ the lion owner told via Prague tabloid Blesk at the time. ‘I made a professional mistake. Like every morning I went to feed it, but this time I put on a coat that smelled of dogs.’
Last summer, Prasek once again made news when a cyclist crashed into his lion while out walking the beast on a leash.
The cyclist was taken to the hospital but only suffered scratches. Police at the time deemed it a traffic accident.
Mr Prasek purchased the lion in 2016 and the lioness last year and kept the pair in enclosures he built himself in his back garden.
He was breeding them illegally and had been fined in the past because he did not have planning permission for the cages. A report via Czech news website Lidovky told of neighbors complaining- with authorities locked in a ‘stalemate’ with Prasek over the lions for three years.
Offered, Zdechov mayor Tomas Kocourek, ‘Today’s incident will perhaps finally help to resolve this long-term problem’.
Regional police told Agence France-Presse that an inquiry had been opened into the lion owner’s death.
