THE owner of a wildlife park where a zoo keeper was mauled to death by a tiger has described how he fired a shot at the animal.

Sarah McClay, 24, was pounced on in the keeper's corridor of the tiger house at South Lakes Wild Animal Park in Cumbria before she was dragged by the back of the neck into a den and then to an outside enclosure.

David Gill, who designed the tiger house and set up the park in Dalton-in-Furness from scratch, told an inquest jury that he ran to the scene when he heard on the park radio that male Sumatran tiger Padang "had got Sarah".

He jumped out of a digger 80 yards away and ran towards a fence on the side of the enclosure, where he saw the tiger with Miss McClay, who was from Glasgow.

Mr Gill said: "He was looking at me and he was sort of sat there. I took real good care to look at Sarah. She didn't move at all. She was completely still, no movement in the slightest."

Staff members had retrieved firearms as part of their emergency procedures and he grabbed a shotgun from a colleague, he said. A maintenance worker broke down the entrance door and was followed by Mr Gill into the corridor where Miss McClay had been working.

The inquest in Kendal has ­previously heard that the corridor door to the tigers' dark den was open, as were two internal gates that allowed the animals to roam in and out to the paddock.

The area was made secure as efforts were then made to capture Padang and a female tiger Alisha, who came in of her own accord.

Mr Gill said he took a rifle as he made his way back to the side of the enclosure. He said: "I got a visual of the tiger. I could not get a shot because of banking and trees. Sarah was below the tiger."

A staff member then radioed to say she had a view of Miss McClay and the tiger from the top of the penguin walkway.

Mr Gill said: "I then ran like crazy to get round there. I could see the tiger but unfortunately it was stood right over Sarah.

"Again I couldn't get a clean shot without the risk of shooting her. I decided to take a shot at the top of the tiger's shoulder, which was the highest point visible, but at the moment the rifle went off the tiger just ran off straight back into the tiger house."

Both tigers were then confined in the house, which was fully locked, he said, while emergency services were on their way.

He added: "The emergency procedure I will say went to plan. Everybody did what they were supposed to. I was very proud of how they all worked."

The jury has heard that systems were place in to ensure animals and keepers remained apart at all times through indoor and outdoor compartments connected by lockable self-closing doors.

However, the court heard that a bolt on one door was found to be defective in the hours following Miss McClay's death on May 24 last year. It could not be said when the damage occurred.

Mr Gill was with police officers as the door was later inspected.

He said: "It was the case, I believe, that the door did not close when it was held open at a certain angle. It did that once. I was holding the door open for quite a long while they (the police) inspected the area."

He said it happened only once out of 10 to 12 times he went to close it.

The inquest has heard that the Sumatran tigers were on their weekly fast on the day of Miss McClay's death but he said that lack of food would not have made them "more aggressive".

Fiona McClay, Miss McClay's mother, has attended the hearing since it began on Monday but chose to leave the room just before Mr Gill was called to give evidence.

The hearing continues.