Zimbabwe alleges 2nd American illegally hunted lion

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Now there are two: Zimbabwe accused a Pennsylvania doctor on Sunday of illegally killing a lion in April, adding to the outcry over a Minnesota dentist the African government wants to extradite for killing a well-known lion named Cecil in early July.

Zimbabwe's National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority accused Jan Casimir Seski of Murrysville, Pennsylvania, of shooting the lion with a bow and arrow in April near Hwange National Park, without approval, on land where it was not allowed.

Landowner Headman Sibanda was arrested and is assisting police, it said.

Seski is a gynecological oncologist who directs the Center for Bloodless Medicine and Surgery at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.

He's also an active big-game hunter, according to safari outfitters and bow-hunting sites where kill shots identify "Dr. Jan Seski" as the man standing next to slain animals including elephants, a hippo, an ostrich and antelopes such as an impala, a kudu, and a nyala.

The Associated Press called and knocked on the door at Seski's home, which is set back among some woods outside Pittsburgh. The AP also left a message with an answering service for his medical practice, with no immediate response.

One image on the Melorani Safaris Facebook page, since taken down, showed Seski posing with the body of a small antelope in 2012, with a caption saying it was killed two days after he shot it with an arrow. Other captions described how his arrows penetrated organs and split bones.

"This Zimbabwe elephant is the sixth African elephant shot by Dr. Jan Seski," Alaska Bowhunting Supply claims in a caption dated September 2014, below a picture of the doctor posing above the dead beast's trunk and tusks.

Images of the doctor wearing camouflage and holding high-powered bows match those on Seski's website, where he wears a suit or hospital scrubs. His address and other identifying information given by authorities in Zimbabwe matches those of U.S. medical authorities.

A handful of Seski's neighbors said he mostly keeps to himself and that he'd been buying up the land around his property. Ernest Hahn said Seski put up no-trespassing signs, breaking the rural area's tradition of people feeling free to cross property lines to hunt.

Hahn said Seski can be "quirky," walking around wearing a low-slung pistol "like a gunslinger," for example, but he appreciates that his neighbor is protecting land from development.

"It seemed to me everything he does is aboveboard," Hahn said. "I've never seen him done anything illegal or unsportsmanlike at all."

Seski provided his name and other identifying information for a government database when he came for the hunt, Zimbabwe National Parks spokeswoman Caroline Washaya Moyo said.

"When hunters come into the country they fill a document stating their personal details, the amount they have paid for the hunt, the number of animals to be hunted, the species to be hunted and the area and period where that hunt is supposed to take place," she said. "The American conducted his hunt in an area where lion hunting is outlawed. The landowner who helped him with the hunt also did not have a have a quota for lion hunting."

Seski seemed like a "perfect gentleman" to Stewart Dorrington, who operates Melorani Safaris and owns a game reserve in neighboring South Africa where Seski hunted in 2012.

"He was a great guy," Dorrington said. "Everything he did was perfectly legal and aboveboard and a great help to our conservation efforts."