"On the evening of 18 August, 2002, Joshka Magyar, his gunbearer, Noel, and a game scout, were looking for a male lion shot at by his hunting client. The client and his wife had been instructed to remain out of harm's way in the hunting car. There are several versions of exactly what happened, but there is no doubt that an angry lioness was accompanying the male lion, for it was she who attacked Joshka without warning. Witnesses say many shots were fired as Joshka grappled with the lioness. It was the Game Department Scout who ultimately dispatched her with a shot to the brain.
"By all accounts, the wounds Magyar sustained from the mauling were not life threatening, but they did require urgent and specialized surgical attention. The air-evacuation aircraft that was called in took Joshka to Nairobi Hospital, where the same Hungarian surgeon who had administered to him after a similar mauling by a leopard six years previous worked his art again. By that evening, Joshka was out of trouble and with his usual well-known flair for comic theatre, was in high spirits.
"The ward nurse on night-duty, checking on Joshka at 4 am found him sleeping, stable and peaceful. Two hours later, on Monday the 19th of August, he was found to be dead. The postmortem examination concluded he had died from a heart attack, a danger, according to those closest to him in those last days, he was fully aware of but refused to do anything........(continued)
