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player ready...In the 14 years that Chicago police officer Bill Rose has been on the force he’s stared down thugs and fended off menacing gangbangers.
But the officer assigned to the Lincoln Park Zoo felt suddenly helpless on Thursday morning as he witnessed a 250-pound lion attack a zookeeper 25 feet away from him.
“I’ve seen gunshots and stabbings and homicides, but I’ve never seen an animal attacking anybody like that,” said Rose.
The zoo is piecing together events leading up to the attack to find out if it was through human error or a more systemic problem that put the 60-year-old Will County woman in the outdoor enclosure with three lions, two females and a male. She remains in Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where her condition has been upgraded from serious to fair.
Zoo director Kevin Bell said the keeper, Nancy DeFiesta, will not be asked to recount the attack until she feels stronger.
Rose was patrolling the zoo grounds on his Segway scooter when he made his way past the outdoor lion habitat. In what has been a daily ritual, he slowed his scooter knowing that the lions looked at him and the unusual vehicle with curiosity.
This time, though, the lions, which were lying down near a plexiglass barrier, barely gave him a passing glance. Instead they stood up and walked toward something that seemed to draw their attention inside their habitat.
“They were on the edge looking down. I looked to see what they were looking at and I saw [DeFiesta] in the moat with [water] buckets,” he said. “They were right above her head. She was probably unaware that they were even there.”
Realizing she wasn’t alone, the keeper scrambled toward a small hatch zoo employees use to gain entry into the habitat.
She was able to quickly get on a radio and yell: “Lion in the moat.”
“That’s all she could do, I’m surprised she could even do that,” Rose said.
Before she could make it to the door, one of the females swooped down into the moat and grabbed her by the back with its thick paws. She struggled to fend off the animal with her arms.
“It bit her and scratched her and was throwing her around,” Rose said.
The attack lasted only seconds and stopped when DeFiesta’s body went limp on the ground and the animal seemed to begin losing interest in her.
By that point Rose had already radioed for an ambulance. He briefly thought of taking out his service revolver and firing at the lion, but the animal was too close to the woman and he feared shooting her.
“What’s going through my head is how the hell am I going to help this woman,” he said. “I can’t shoot, the lion’s on top of her.”
The male lion had begun trying to make it down to the moat, though it seemed he was simply curious, Rose said.
Zoo officials armed with fire extinguishers were able to scare the lions indoors as Rose, now accompanied by other officers, trained their guns on the animals. Rescuers passed down a ladder and firefighter Ben Hosek, 42, scurried down and helped DeFiesta climb out.
“There was a lot of blood all over her face, head and arms,” Hosek said. “I told her she had to go up the ladder. She said, `I can’t move.’ I told her, `You have to go. If the lions come out, this is it.”‘