I was up in the Bay Area yesterday when news broke out that a tiger at the San Francisco zoo has gotten loose and killed a visitor before the cops arrived and killed the sucker.
Leigh Lawson stands in front of
the San Francisco Zoo on Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2007, protesting the
killing of a Siberian tiger that killed one person and injured two
others on Christmas Day. Police officers shot the tiger after it
escaped from its enclosure and attacked the three visitors. Lawson,
picketing alone, outside the zoo Wednesday afternoon, says she wishes
officers had tranquilized the animal instead.
To which I say, “what took so long?” I mean this is San Francisco and the nuts run rampant there.
The sad part? She wasn’t there in memoriam for the 17 year old who was killed. No, she was there to protest the “excessive” force used by the police.
It takes all kinds.
UPDATE
A lively discussion going on in the comment section, check it out. Also, lots of new information out today:
The last minutes of a 17-year-old boy’s life were spent trying to save his friend from the tiger that was mauling him at the San Francisco Zoo, only to have the animal turn on him, police and family members said.
Carlos Sousa Jr. and his friend’s brother desperately tried to distract the 350-pound Siberian tiger, but the big cat instead came after Sousa.
“He didn’t run. He tried to help his friend, and it was him who ended up getting it the worst,” the teen’s father, Carlos Sousa Sr., said Thursday after meeting with police.
The heroic portrait of Sousa and a timeline of the dramatic Christmas Day attack emerged as officials revealed that the tiger’s escape from its enclosure may have been aided by walls that were well below the height recommended by the accrediting agency for the nation’s zoos.
San Francisco Zoo Director Manuel A. Mollinedo acknowledged that the wall around the animal’s pen was just 12½ feet high, after previously saying it was 18 feet. According to the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, the walls around a tiger exhibit should be at least 16.4 feet high.
Mollinedo said it was becoming increasingly clear the tiger leaped or climbed out, perhaps by grabbing onto a ledge. Investigators have ruled out the theory the tiger escaped through a door behind the exhibit at the zoo, which remained closed Friday
~~~After interviewing the brothers, police said Kulbir Dhaliwal was the animal’s first victim.
As the tiger clawed and bit him, Sousa and the younger brother yelled in hopes of scaring it off him, police said. The cat then went for Sousa, slashing his neck as the brothers ran to a zoo cafe for help.
After killing the teenager, the tiger followed a trail of blood left by Kulbir Dhaliwal about 300 yards to the cafe, where it mauled both men, police said.
Four officers who had already discovered Sousa’s body then arrived and found the cat sitting next to one of the bloodied brothers, police Chief Heather Fong said. The victim yelled, “Help me! Help me!” and the animal resumed its attack, Fong said.
The officers used their patrol car lights to distract the tiger, and it turned and began approaching them, leading all four to open fire, she said.
~~~
On Thursday, Fong denied earlier reports that police were looking into the possibility that the victims had dangled a leg or other body part over the edge of the moat, after a shoe and blood was found inside the enclosure. No shoe was found inside, but a shoeprint was found on the railing of the fence surrounding the enclosure, and police are checking it against the shoes of the three victims, she said.
I’m still highly doubtful that the tiger just decided to jump out for no reason but it appears a bit of disinformation was spread about the shoe being found in the enclosure.
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