Natalie Bennett (24) a veterinary nurse from Carshalton , Surrey has been hailed a hero after she used a broom to fight off a pair of lions attacking a fellow volunteer at the Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre, near the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa.
Natalie was cleaning cages when a male lion and a lioness caught Lauren Fagen (18) by her legs and dragged her into their pen. Alerted by her piercing screams Natalie fled to the rescue.
She said: ‘At first we thought it was a group messing about because of the lions.
‘A split second later we realised what it was and started running.
‘When we got there a couple of volunteers were in complete shock and were just stood there terrified.’
Miss Fagen who is from Montreal, had been dragged through the cage by her knees after kneeling by the cage and putting her hand out for the lions to ‘lick’. The male grabbed her knee through the bars and pulled her leg into the cage, closely followed by a lioness who grabbed her other leg leaving her powerless.
Natalie said: ‘We tried to distract the lions by thundering on the cages to try and scare them and we got brooms and brushes to try and get them off her.’ 
‘It was the lioness we were worried about because they are the killers.’
After two frantic minutes the lions released their grip on the 18-year-old who was bleeding heavily having sustained severe wounds to her legs and thighs.
As the first medically qualified volunteer on the scene, Natalie sprung into action using skills she learned in the veterinary practice applying pressure to the wound and preventing the girl from going into shock before a paramedic arrived on the scene.
Source - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/Cascade News.
Natalie explained: ‘Both her knees were injured and she had puncture wounds in the calf and huge gouges out of her thigh. She was extremely lucky the lions didn’t just rip her legs off, and that they did not hit the ephemeral artery.’
Miss Fagen is recovering in hospital but will be left with significant scarring.
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