Source: http://www.news.com.au
A MAN was eaten by lions after running past guards into Johannesburg’s Kruger National Park at dusk just as the gates were closing, park officials said today.
Park spokesman Raymond Travers said guards and rangers searched for the unidentified man in the dark after he ran into the park yesterday, but failed to find him. He was found after dawn today as the lions feasted on his corpse.
“We have no idea why he ran in,” Travers said. “We suspect the man was mentally deranged. No-one in their right mind would run into the bush at Kruger at night. It’s far too dangerous.”
Kruger National Park is home to between 4,500 and 5,000 lions spread across an area roughly the size of Belgium.
Rangers shot one lion, an elderly male, as he devoured the body and were looking for a female lion, he said.
“It was an elderly lion and elderly lions tend to look for easy prey,” he said. “These lions have obviously learned that humans are easy prey and that is what we are worried about.”
Mentally ill people had occasionally broken into the park and been eaten in the past, he said, but it was highly unusual.
Addition: Apparantly this person lived at a care facility 400meters away from the “national park” entrance.