A woman volunteer who regularly feeds big cats at Carole Baskin's Big Cat Rescue sanctuary in Florida nearly had her arm torn off by one.
Sixty-nine-year-old Candy Crouser was injured Thursday. The sanctuary was made popular by the Netflix series "Tiger King," officials said.
In a statement, Big Cat Rescue management said Crouser - who had been working with the sanctuary for five years - was badly injured after Kimba, a male tiger rescued from Guatemala, bit her.
Sanctuary officials said Crouser violated policy by sticking her hand into the 3-year-old tiger's cage.
Kimba "grabbed her arm and almost tore it off at the shoulder," Baskin, chief executive officer of Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, said in an email to The Associated Press.
"Our universal signal is not to open a gate" without assistance, Baskin said. "It's against our protocols for anyone to stick any part of their body into a cage with a cat in it," AP quoted the chief executive saying.
Ambulance personnel arrived 20 minutes later and took the volunteer to hospital, the statement said.
Couser was conscious. She admitted to an error in judgment, she told BuzzFeed.
The tiger will be placed in observation for the next 30 days, the sanctuary said.
