Posted on 12/27/2007 10:18:04 AM PST by wardaddy
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The big cat exhibit at the San Francisco Zoo was cordoned off as a crime scene Wednesday as investigators tried to determine whether a Siberian tiger that killed a visitor escaped from its high-walled pen on its own or got help from someone, inadvertent or otherwise.
Police shot the 300-pound animal to death after a Christmas Day rampage that began when the tiger escaped from an enclosure surrounded by what zoo officials said are an 18-foot wall and a 20-foot moat. Two brothers who also were visiting the zoo were severely mauled.
Police Chief Heather Fong said the department has opened a criminal investigation to "determine if there was human involvement in the tiger getting out or if the tiger was able to get out on its own."
Police said they have not ruled anything out, including whether the escape was the result of carelessness or a deliberate act.
(AP) Tatiana, a female Siberian tiger that killed one person and injured two others, is seen in the lion... Full Image
Fong said officers were gathering evidence from the tiger's enclosure as well as accounts from witnesses and others.
One zoo official insisted the tiger did not get out through an open door and must have climbed or leaped out. But Jack Hanna, former director of the Columbus Zoo and a frequent guest on TV, said such a leap would be an unbelievable feat, and "virtually impossible."
"There's something going on here. It just doesn't feel right to me," he said. "It just doesn't add up to me."
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
Did they make the trip from Clemson? Lol.
You'd think there'd be video surveillance? Now there's an argument over how high the wall was. 12 feet or 18?
For the record, I agree, and so to most on this thread, that the cops did what they had to do, so you're tilting at windmills even bringing up the Meerkat incident (I think they were meerkats). They're completely different. Don't misinterpret grief that a loose tiger ~had~ to be killed with an argument that unnecessarily killing a whole population of meerkats as a precautionary measure to save the girl from having to get shots.
So are movie theaters and amusement parks. Lots of people go on vacations and to recreational places on Christmas. I wouldn't, but I guess just sitting around the house playing with new toys isn't good enough for some people ;~)
Oh, please. Once I read that the family was Brazilian, I knew we’d have hateful comments here.
The parents are divorced, and the kid was on his way from his father’s house to his mother’s crummy apartment (where she had a few modest gifts for him) and obviously went off with his friends for a bit.
Both parents are middle-age employed people, not Latin Kings, and the kid who was killed appears to have been an average high schooler who wanted to start a band, etc. and had a facebook page.
The father is a typical divorced dad, looking for bucks. I wonder what his support history is.
But be that as it may, everybody should stop hating them, please.
If the tiger could escape, it was the zoo’s fault. People who work with animals often, oddly enough, underestimate them. This was a wild animal, and while it may have been out of shape and was not having to hunt for its living, it was clearly more dangerous than the other animals (or it wouldn’t have chewed the arm off its keeper a year ago) and also always had the potential to do what its species can do.
I’ve seen lame old house cats take off from a sitting position and land on a spot six feet above their heads. The problem is that when people become very familiar with and sentimental about large animals, they forget the dangerous capabilities of that animal, and if it turns out that an annoyed, hungry and born-bad-natured tiger got out of her cage, then the zoo should pay up and there should be a major reevaluation of these things.
Big cats are dangerous. My son’s godmother grew up in St Louis in the 1920s, and one time when she was a child and went to visit a friend, the friend told her not to make any comment on her mother’s face. They had apparently been at the zoo a few years before and a tiger had reached out and dragged her baby brother, who was about 4 at the time and was standing behind the fence, into the cage and killed and started eating him in front of the mother before the keepers could intervene. The mother had a seizure that paralyzed one half of her face into a permanent scream.
These are dangerous animals and more people are killed by tigers than by any other animal in the world.
Let’s contact Madeline Murray O’Hare she’ll
connect the dots.
UFO
JFK
NGO
Exotic rodents from Africa, with not a lot of history in America and our pathogens and our means of managing pathogens.
Animal lovers have a hard time coming to terms with their own misanthropy--and the fact that they relish a Porterhouse now and then.
All right show us the hateful comments.
LOL !!
Thanks for the visual. It helps me to better understand this incident.
That's the most unconscionable thing said in this thread. It was Mutual of Omaha.
Thanks for discrediting yourself so I didn't have to bother.
Most cops couldn't hit a bull in the ass with a bass fiddle much less kill a Siberian tiger with their normal duty weapon. I expect that they took a healthy regard for the tiger's ability to render their body armor and "Fritz" helmets into so much tissue paper. Since we don't know if they had long guns available I simply posited a scenario in which it was possible to kill a tiger with a handgun.
As for "heroic" cops, my three nephews (cops one and all) tell me that heroic cops tend to become dead cops at an alarming rate. Smart cops shoot from cover and take no unnecessary chances and thus get to retire and become old cops.
Regards,
GtG
PS One of my nephews has been everything from a town constable to a state trooper, prison guard, and a Marine. I trust his judgment on "Heroics".
When police arrived, they first found Sousa, who was pronounced dead at the scene. The officers began a search and found the 23-year-old victim lying on the ground with cuts on his face. He was cornered by the tiger. As the officers approached, police said, the tiger jumped back on top of the man and resumed its attack. The animal then became distracted by the four officers, who were yelling, and advanced toward the officers. All four fired their .40-caliber handguns, hitting the tiger an unknown number of times.
No misanthropy here... but a developing strong disinterest in continuing to read your flowery but nonsensical argument about this.
And shooting a loose big cat with a tranquilizer gun (which takes time to take effect, I will remind you) would be a very big unnecessary risk. Four cops, even with handguns, I'm sure could take down a cat with lethal force.
Somehow if the kids taunted to tiger then it’s ok they died or they deserved it.
If you taunt a animal that can kill you and it happens then you may have deserved it.
“Sounds like the top of the moat is level with the spectator
walkway ???”
According to the article, the enclosure was built in 1940, which might well explain the inadequate idiot-proofing.
Designer 1: “Say, don’t you think it should be a little higher in case someone gets in there and dangles his leg over the side to provoke the cat.”
Designer 2: “Are you crazy? Nobody’s that stupid!”
Hmm maybe we should drop the charge of taunting, and replace it with a charge of dangling-yummy-treats-with-out-fore-thought-of-consequences... heh heh just a thouhgt...
Ha ha . Indeed !
Like the computer security guy that doesn’t
“think like a hacker” then wonders why his security measures don’t work.
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