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A white rhino was shot dead and had its horn hacked off at a zoo outside Paris — much to the astonishment of the people who work there.

A zookeeper was making her nightly rounds at the Thoiry Zoo on Monday when she saw that the rhino house had been broken into. When she went to investigate, she discovered the butchered corpse of the zoo's four-year-old white rhinoceros, Vince.

"It was unbelievably shocking to all our members of staff," zoo director Colomba de la Panouse told As It Happens guest host Susan Bonner.

"I mean, of course we know this happens in Africa, that there's poaching going on ... but we thought there's many steps that criminals would take before actually coming to the zoo."

Zoo director Colomba de la Panouse says she's astonished that a rhino was shot dead at Thoiry. (Domaine de Thoiry )

It would have been no easy feat to pull off, she says. The 155-hectare property is equipped with security cameras and has four staff members who live on site, de la Panouse included.

"So these people knew what they were doing," she said. "They knew where to find the house. They'd clearly been working on this plan for a while."

Nevertheless, it doesn't appear to have gone according to plan, she said.

It's a one thing to steal a rhino horn. It's another thing altogether to actually shoot an animal and saw its horn off. - Colomba de la Panouse, Thoiry Zoo director

"Once they shot Vince, they sawed his big horn off and they started sawing his second horn, the smaller one, and they stopped," she said.

"So we think they were either disturbed or something went wrong with their equipment. But they didn't end their work, thank God, because who's to know when they would have stopped with the work. They might have killed the other rhinos too."

The two surviving creatures were not physically harmed, she said, but she believes they were impacted by the incident.

"They were very quiet," she said. "There's no doubt it would have been traumatic to them."

The zoo's surviving rhinos were likely traumatized by the attack on Vince, says the director Colomba de la Panouse. (Domaine de Thoiry )

A rhinoceros horn can be sold for up to $60,000 US on the black market because of a strong demand linked to the belief that the horns have aphrodisiac powers — which de la Panouse calls "complete nonsense."

She said she's heard of poachers stealing horns from museums in Europe, but she never thought something like this could happen.

"​It's a one thing to steal a rhino horn. It's another thing altogether to actually shoot an animal and saw its horn off," she said.

Police are investigating and the culprits are still are at large. In the meantime, the zoo's staff have alerted their colleagues across Europe and are discussing security at Thoiry.

"We're certainly going to revisit the way we do things."

With files from Associated Press