Zookeepers rushed to close gates to an enclosure before a tiger that killed their colleague could reach a public area, an inquest has heard.

Rosa King, 33, was savaged by a male Malayan tiger called Cicip at Hamerton zoo park in Cambridgeshire. Both a wooden gate to keep the public from a service area and a metal gate to keep the tiger in its paddock were left open after King was attacked on 29 May 2017.

She sustained traumatic injuries and died at the scene, Tuesday’s inquest hearing in Huntingdon was told.

Lucy Tonkin, who was on work experience at the zoo, said that one keeper shouted to another to “run to close the gates, as she realised they were open”.

“Some members of the public assumed they were shouting at them so they ran to the porch area of the tiger enclosure,” she said. “We then shut both gates of the tiger enclosure.”

Frank York, a regular visitor to the zoo, was in the public viewing area when he saw King’s body lying in the enclosure with the tiger in the vicinity. Moments earlier he had walked past a family with young children.

The Cambridgeshire assistant coroner Nicholas Moss, taking York through his statement, said: “You rushed to go and get help but on the way out you told the mum of the family that something terrible had happened and not to go further down the tunnel. You also told them: ‘No one goes into the tunnel area, particularly children.’

He then alerted zoo workers. “You said they did everything you would expect them to do to try to keep people safe and to try to save their colleague,” Moss said.

Ben McRobie, an education officer at the zoo, said in a statement: “We shut the double gates and shooed some members of the public away who were near those gates.” He said he heard a keeper say “something like, ‘He’s got her, she’s dead.’ Someone said: ‘We need to get Cicip the tiger off Rosa.’”

He described throwing meat over the enclosure’s fence to try to distract the tiger and a zookeeper, Jamila Achaoui, said a colleague brought a bucket of meat. “We had to get Cicip in his enclosure as the police were coming to shoot him,” she said. After the tiger moved out of the paddock and into his run, she said a colleague dropped a metal slide to lock him in.

The coroner told York that “nothing could be done … for Rosa” at the time he found her. “You took a number of very appropriate measures,” he said. “You stopped others from seeing the scene. You made sure help was called quickly. You did everything you could.”

The head keeper, Katherine Adams, said King was “very safety conscious” but the inquest heard she may have been tired after a busy weekend at work and caring for a baby serval – a kind of African wild cat – including feeding at night.