Make New York Post a Preferred Source The zoo-goer who was mauled to death by a Siberian tiger had taunted the big cat to come and “kill” him, according to harrowing eyewitness accounts of his final moments.
Several people had noticed the man, whom cops are not identifying at his family’s request, as he walked around Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster, England on Saturday.
He was “pacing around with his headphones in” and happily “dancing,” witnesses said — with one even catching audio of him asking her to take a photo of him with the Siberian tiger, Altai, behind him.
“Excuse me, can you grab a shot of myself with the tiger?” he was heard asking Del Taylor in a clip viewed more than 11 million times on X.
“One more, one more, one more!” he excitedly asked, as Taylor’s boyfriend admired the tiger lazing in the sunshine.
“Thank you, lady,” he ended the conversation — the last he’s known to have had before climbing a 15-foot fence into the enclosure.
“He was completely alone,” Taylor told the Sun of the tragic stranger whose phone she used to take his final photos.
As the man started climbing the fence, a woman close to him tried to stop him but “wasn’t strong enough” to hold him back, Anthony Hunt told the Telegraph.
“He overpowered her and jumped off,” Hunt said.
“She seemed really frightened,” he said of the woman who tried to save him. “We spoke to her after and she was like, ‘I tried to pull him back’ but I guess she didn’t want to risk her own life as well.”
The man then got down on his knees in front of the tiger — and started taunting it, Hunt told the Times of London.
“It looked like a performance. He got down where everyone could see him in the main viewing area. He was on all fours, praying and bowing down to the tiger. It was like he was waiting for the tiger,” the horrified onlooker recalled.
“He had his arms wide open like he was saying: ‘Come here tiger. Kill me’.
“Then the tiger came and started to attack him. He started to fight back and screamed. It was like he was just detached from reality. The last thing we saw, the tiger was on his neck.”
He then started “yelling at the tiger and waving his finger at him, yelling, ‘No’,” another witness told the UK outlet.
“The tiger grabbed him by the neck. It all happened very fast. The tiger staff were in there quickly, and fired two shots to the ground to scare the tiger away from the man.”
Other witnesses stressed that the man seemed confused and didn’t expect the big cat to actually attack.
“I honestly do think he just wanted to play with the tiger,” Marie Miller wrote on Facebook.
The man was pronounced dead at the scene. The warning shots were not fired at Altai, who was unharmed and will not be euthanized, the wildlife park said.
After the attack, park employees raised a black screen around the tiger enclosure and closed the park for the remainder of the weekend.
A black screen was placed around the enclosure after the attack, and the park closed for the remainder of the weekend.
“We are working closely with the authorities to ascertain exactly what happened. The safety and wellbeing of our visitors, staff and animals remain our highest priority,” Yorkshire Wildlife Park said in a statement.
