The 30-year-old claims to have followed a tarmac track until reaching the zoo’s “American safari”, without encountering any clear indication that animals could be in the wild.
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After the opening of an investigation into involuntary injuries by the Versailles public prosecutor’s office, the woman seriously injured by wolves while jogging in the Thoiry zoo (Yvelines) filed a complaint for breaches of a safety obligation of the leaves the animal park, his lawyer announced to AFP on Thursday June 27. Hospitalized as an absolute emergency, the victim is now in a stable condition, but is unable to speak due to an injury to the larynx, said Cosima Ouhioun.
“She hopes that her case serves to establish sufficient standards of safety in this animal park so that this never happens again.”
Cosima Ouhioun, lawyerto AFP
In a report submitted Wednesday to the Mantes-la-Jolie gendarmerie brigade and consulted by AFP, the victim said she arrived in Thoiry late Saturday afternoon with her mother and her 2-year-old son and stayed in a “loudge”, accommodation located “in the heart of the vast massif of white wolves”according to the zoo website.
The next morning before her departure, scheduled for 10 a.m., she wanted to go jogging, ensuring that a ranger had confirmed to her the evening before that this did not present any danger and that the animals were in enclosures. The 30-year-old claims to have followed a tarmac track until reaching the zoo’s “American safari”, without encountering any clear indication that animals could be in the wild.
The jogger explains that she only came across a green sign with text but without any signage suggesting a ban on the perimeter for pedestrians. According to the CEO of Wow Safari Thoiry, Christelle Bercheny, this type of sign reminds “the rules of survival” to follow in the park.
Shortly after passing this sign, the woman saw a bear on her left and a wolf on her right. Despite her attempt to remain calm, maintain eye contact and retreat, she was spotted by the wolf, who followed her and attacked her calves. Two other wolves joined the first and bit the victim on the thighs and back, causing her to fall, then attacked her neck and grabbed her hair.
The jogger said she was rescued by a caregiver who was at the “loudges” level and heard her scream, then was quickly taken care of by the firefighters and the Samu. The Thoiry zoo explained for its part that it had opened an internal investigation to “analyze all the circumstances which could have led to this accident”.