THE Scots mother of a zoo keeper killed by a Sumatran tiger in front of horrified onlookers after a door was left "wide open" pleaded for the animal to be spared.

Sarah McClay, below, 24, died after being mauled by a male tiger, called Padang, on May 24 at South Lakes Wild Animal Park in Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria. Her mother Fiona McClay, 54, of Linlithgow, said she had asked for the tiger not to be destroyed because Sarah would not have wanted this to happen.

She said: "I said, 'Please tell me that the wild animal which did this has not been destroyed'. Sarah would not have wanted that. The tiger was acting from natural instincts.

"He dragged her outside, but that is what a tiger does. He is a wild animal."

Police say Padang should have been locked in an outside enclosure as Ms McClay cleaned up the tigers' pen after feeding time in a staff-only area.

But the full-grown tiger walked through an open door, which should have been secured and got back into the pen where it dragged Ms McClay 50 yards into the public viewing area.

The alarm was quickly raised and zoo owner David Gill and a colleague scared the tiger back into its pen and carried Ms McClay, to waiting paramedics. She was airlifted to the Royal Preston Hospital where she died.

The family of Ms McClay, from Barrow, Cumbria, have set up a memorial in her name for red squirrel conservation.