10 Times Animals Mauled Their Owners to Death

Many people dream of having wild and exotic animals as pets; some of these dreamers have managed to get their wish against all odds. Sometimes everything ends well, but sometimes the relationship between man and animal goes terribly wrong to the point that these companion animals turn to kill their owners and even eat them. On the other hand, there have been people who were cautious enough to keep only domestic animals around, but suffered the same fate. These are ten times that animals mutilated their owners to death:

Related: 10 scary tales of when squirrels attack

10 Andre Lumboga was killed and eaten by his own dogs

An Indonesian man, Andre Lumboga, left seven dogs without food or water for two weeks and went on vacation. Hungry dogs pounced on him as soon as he returned, killed and ate him. His death would not have been discovered if it weren’t for a curious neighborhood guard who saw abandoned luggage lined up in front of his house without seeing any sign of the man.

When the guard approached the house, the bad smell emanating from the house prompted him to call the police. The deceased man’s skull was found in the kitchen and his body was found in front of his house. The attackers numbered seven dogs in all, and they had killed and eaten two other dogs in the two weeks he was away. Ironically, Lumboga is from the northern Indonesian island of Sulawesi, where the local diet is famous for including dogs.^[1]

9 Michal Prasek was mauled to death by his lion

A man named Michal Prasek had a lion and a lioness to breed in his backyard in the Czech Republic. Pets were kept in home enclosures. He had aroused the concern of local residents and authorities by his strange choice of pets, but no one was willing to go out of their way to stop him, perhaps out of fear of his wild animal companions.

Prasek was denied planning permission to build the enclosures where he housed the animals and was later fined for illegal breeding. However, his conflict with the authorities came to a standstill after he refused to let anyone onto his property. In the end, Michal Prasek was mauled to death by the lion, prompting authorities to shoot both wild animals.^[2]

8 Oregon farmer was eaten by his pigs

Terry Vance Garner was a farmer in Coos County, near the Oregon coast. On one fateful day, he set out to feed his pigs but never returned. Later, a family member found Garner’s dentures and parts of his body in the pig pen several hours later. Most of his remains had been eaten by pigs when he was discovered.

Garner was a Vietnam War veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the biggest cure-all for his condition was living on the farm. He devoted himself to the animals on his farm, raising different types of animals, including birds. Ironically, Garner may have unknowingly encouraged his own death at the hands of his animals.

A year before he was mauled to death by pigs, he was bitten by a large sow for accidentally stepping on a piglet. He initially made the decision to kill the pig, but later changed his mind and let the pig live. Ultimately, he would die at the hands of the animals he had such compassion for.^[3]

7 Cynthia Lee Gamble mutilated by her own tiger

Cynthia Lee Gamble of Danforth Township in Pine County, Minnesota, was a woman who loved wildlife. She has edited and written wildlife documentaries and has appeared in television and feature films. She raised, trained, and filmed wolves, wolverines, coyotes, and foxes. Cynthia seemed to have a particular interest in tigers. Before her death, she had kept tigers on her property for at least a decade and they had never caused her trouble.

Even the fact that Cynthia wasn’t a novice at keeping feral cats couldn’t keep her safe and alive. On the fateful day of her death, she was cleaning a Bengal tiger’s cage and accidentally left one of her swinging doors open, exposing her to an attack from behind. The tiger quickly seized the opportunity for her to maul her to death.^[4]

6 Al Abell mauled to death by Pet Lion

Like the previous entry, forgetfulness while cleaning a wild animal’s cage led to Al Abell’s death. Usually, Al Abell liked to clean the cage of his pet lion, but he had never done it alone. On that fateful day, Al Abell was alone on his Illinois farm and moved his pet lion from the main cage to the pen on duty so he could clean the main enclosure. Unfortunately, he left the door between the main cage and the pen on duty open while he cleaned up. The lion quickly pounced on the man and mauled him to death. Remarkably, Al Abell and his wife had raised Simba, a 5-year-old African Barbary lion, from when he was a cub.

The day the tragedy occurred, Kathie Abell left the house to run some errands. When she returned, Al Abell was nowhere to be found. He also discovered that the lion was outside its enclosure, pacing agitated while the other wild animals on the farm were scared and restless. The scene unfolding before her eyes terrified her and she called the sheriff. When the police officers arrived at the scene, they had to shoot and kill Simba to prevent her from escaping from her and causing more havoc.^[5]

5 East Texas Man Killed by Pet Deer

Gerald Rushton, an East Texas man who raised exotic deer on his property, went into the animal’s pen to feed it, only for it to become aggressive and attack him. Rushton was mauled to death right in his backyard. Family members who witnessed the attack alerted authorities, but Rushton could not be saved. He died from excessive blood loss when the deer impaled him with its antlers.

The man bred the deer illegally as authorities do not grant citizens permits to keep red deer in their homes due to the extremely wild nature of the animal. The day Rushton died, responding officers also killed the deer.^[6]

4 Woman killed by her pet Wolf-Dogs

Sandra L. Piovesan of Salem Township loved raising wolf dogs. She kept a pack of nine of them inside a pen on her property. One day, she entered the wolfhound enclosure in her backyard and the animals attacked her, killing her in the process. She was also partially eaten by her own pets. Piovesan’s daughter suspected something was wrong when her mother failed to show up for a 10:00 am meeting the following Monday.

Piovesan’s daughter contacted her father, who went to Sandra’s property and found her dead in the wolfhound compound. She had bled to death after the animals scratched her, bit her, and then dragged her into the enclosure. Most of the wolfdogs weighed from 70 to 100 pounds (31.7 to 45.4 kilograms) and some were 7 to 8 years old. A wildlife expert believed that the animals became agitated and aggressive due to the season.^[7]

3 Temperamental pet bull kills owner

Ricky Weinhold, of Burks County, Pennsylvania, was attacked one fateful Saturday by a one-ton bull he raised as a pet on a farm he rented in Wernersville, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia. The irony of this incident is that the property owners had warned Weinhold to get rid of the pet bull due to his “temperamental” behavior. The property owners believed that the bull had a bad disposition and could not be trusted.

Weinhold had about 10 cattle on the farm, all of which he kept as pets. In the summer of the previous year, prior to the fatal incident, Weinhold had been attacked and injured by the same bull. He broke several ribs during the attack, but he didn’t see this as a sinister sign. Although Weinhold loved his pets, the killer bull did not return the love.^[8]

2 Man killed by his own goat “watch”

In the countryside of Cherokee County, Georgia, Carl Hulsey, a 77-year-old retired poultry worker who had an innovative approach to crop safety on his farmland, got more than he bargained for when the goat he was training was a he-goat attacked him and killed him. The training routine was too much for the goat, as Hulsey frequently beat her, believing this would make her aggressive enough to protect the undulating acres of hers from her predators. The opposite happened.

Instead of protecting Husley’s investment, the man became a victim of his own billy goat. One day, the goat hit him once, then twice before Husley fell to his knees. Husley climbed onto the porch, and the animal climbed right behind him. The goat charged his master again, who fell off the porch and died instantly. The coroner determined that Hulsey had died due to blunt trauma to the abdominal cavity.^[9]

1 International footballer mutilated to death by a mob of domestic dogs

Philemon Mulala, a 60-year-old retired Zambian former international footballer, who had raised three puppies to adult dogs, did not expect that the dogs he cared for might turn on him. But that was exactly what happened. On the day of the tragic event, Mulala’s wife heard the dogs barking in the backyard, but she did not bother to investigate the cause of the commotion as they lived on a busy street and the dogs liked to bark at pedestrians and vehicles. what happened

However, when she searched the house for her husband and couldn’t find him, she decided to look in the backyard. It was there that she found Mulala lying motionless in the garden. She was shocked to find out that her husband was killed by the three dogs she had been devoted to. The three pet dogs were removed from the home by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.^[10]