Indian man climbs over fence and gets killed by tiger
According to eyewitnesses at the New Delhi Zoo and Indian officials, a white tiger killed a man who climbed over the fence and fell into the animal's outdoor enclosure.
The incident took place on Tuesday, between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m. local time. Cameras were able to catch the whole incident and everything happened before the eyes of visitors at the zoo.
The National Zoological Park spokesman Riyaz Ahmed Khan told to The Guardian that the young man was warned many times about not getting too close to the fence. The victim who officials think is 20-years-old, started climbing the fence through small hedges, ignoring the repeated warnings. He then jumped off the 18ft fence, being left with no barrier between himself and the animal. Many eyewitnesses were able to record the horrific incident with their cell phones. A local news outlet, NDTV, as reported by The New York Times, had interviews with the witnesses and some of them complained about the security staff lacking equipment such as tranquilizers that could have saved the young man's life. One of the witnesses said that the initial first response team was one guard with a baton. The director of the zoo, Amitabh Agnihotri, claimed that they had tranquilizers, but by the time they were ready to be used it was too late to save the young man. The tiger kept carrying the body around after the attack. Zoo staff had to scare the tiger back into a cage so they could retrieve the body of the victim. It took two hours for them to do so. The animal, a seven-year-old white tiger named Vijay is six-feet long and weighs about 100 pounds. The tigers lives on an island filled with trees and grass, resembling his natural habitat. Tigers are classified as an endangered species. Due to illegal hunting and habitat loss, their numbers drastically dropped in the 20th century. There are only about 3,500 tigers left in the wild, with only 1,000 females of breeding age.
