A Shocking Tiger Attack at the San Francisco Zoo

It seems like an impossible scenario. Shortly before the San Francisco Zoo closed on Christmas Day, three young people were attacked by a tiger. One was mauled to death, and the other two were rushed to the hospital where they are now recovering.

As police entered the scene, they came across the first victim, seventeen-year old Carlos Sousa, who died at the scene. Three hundred yards later, they found the tiger sitting next to one of it's victims who was crying, "help me, help me." As the officers tried to distract the animal away, the tiger turned away from the victim, and moved towards the officers, who then shot and killed her.

Within hours of the incident, speculation was being floated about by the news media that the men had somehow taunted the animal. Regardless of whether or not this was true, it did not answer the more important question of how the animal could have gotten out of its cage. I have been to the zoo many times, and seen the exhibit firsthand. With only 33 feet between one side of the grotto to the other, it seems as though patrons are very close to the animals. However, there is a large gap separating them; a 20 foot wide moat. From the bottom of the moat to the top of the visitors side is a high wall that was first reported to be 20 feet high. What separates the top of that wall from the visitors is a waist-high fence.

The tiger, a four year old Siberian tiger named Tatiana, was the same one who had attacked a zoo keeper almost exactly a year earlier. In that incident, the zoo keeper had just finished feeding Tatiana and had apparently reached for something inside the animal area. As terrified patrons watched, Tatiana mauled the keeper. Various media reports describe the attack various ways, from causing deep lacerations to her arms to the tiger tearing the flesh off the zoo keeper's arms. In interviews at that time, the zoo's director of animal care and conservation, Robert Jenkins, told the San Francisco Chronicle that it would not be "normal procedure" to put an animal down for this kind of behavior. Jenkins also added that Tatiana had no history of aggression towards humans.