Warren, 40, had her throat slit after she was bound and gagged when she confronted an intruder at the home she shared with her partner Aaron Nicholas. She had been living in Cameroon for four years with Nicolas, a fellow British promatologist. Warren was working with the Wildlife Conservation Society.
“She was attacked at about 7.30am after Nicolas had left for work”, according to her British neighbour, Dr Bethan Morgan, another ape expert.
It is believed the attacker, hid himself in the couple’s ceiling the previous day before committing the act.
When Dr Warren confronted him, he lashed out with a machete, according to a domestic employee who witnessed the attack.
Nicholas returned minutes later to find Dr Warren bleeding to death. He and a friend wrapped her in a blanket and took her to the Limbe Regional hospital, but she was too badly injured to survive.
Dr Morgan, who had spoken to Nicholas and their maid, said Dr Warren had been bound and gagged but had put up a fight before being slashed across the throat.
She said: “We would all like to think that this is a robbery gone wrong, but we don’t know.”
Dr Warren and Nicholas, who have been together nine years, lived in an up-market area of Limbe known as the Botanical Gardens. Few properties have fences or security measures.
The couple were working on the Takamanda-Mone Landscape Project, run by the American Wildlife Conservation Society. They were studying Cross River gorillas, one of West Africa’s most threatened primate populations.
Dr Warren is said to have been a highly experienced primatologist who had studied at University College London and Roehampton University.
The Cameroonian police have opened investigations into the events surrounding the death.
Source: Africanews