Man bitten by tiger may face charges
NAPLES, Fla. (NewsNation Now) — Collier County sheriff’s deputies arriving to a call at a zoo in Naples found a horrific scene, with a man whose arm was being bitten by a tiger. The tiger would not let go, and deputies were forced to shoot the big cat, killing it.
In the video above, the 911 call made by the man while he was being bitten by the tiger can be heard.
Now, however, the man bitten by the tiger, who was a member of a third-party cleaning crew who had no reason to be as close as he was to the big cat, may face charges, according to the Collier County Sheriff’s Office.
Ron McGill, a tiger expert at Zoo Miami, told NewsNation’s Brian Entin that, “The body camera video is disturbing, but it shows to me that what happened here was absolutely no fault of the tiger. It’s obvious that this person breached more than one barrier to get to where he was.”
The tiger killed was named Eko, who was an 8-year-old Malayan tiger, a critically endangered species. There are fewer than 300 left in the world.
McGill blamed “Tiger King” and the social media frenzy for getting selfies with dangerous animals for the incident, saying that people don’t consider the danger to themselves and the animals when they get inappropriately close to them to take selfies.