One killed and two mauled by zoo tiger

LYING bloodied and lifeless, the remains of the visitor to San Francisco Zoo left the city's police in no doubt this was far from a routine emergency call.

Tentatively, the four officers made their way deeper into the grounds, as darkness fell.

After walking for a few hundred yards, they discovered the second victim. Slumped on the ground outside a small café, the man clutched his head, blood pouring from the deep bites and claw cuts to his scalp.

Beside him sat the cause of the carnage, all 300lb of her – Tatiana, a Siberian tiger with a history of violence. Suddenly, the animal lurched and again launched an attack on the injured man.

The armed officers closed in. Tatiana, her attention drawn, began prowling towards them. Left with no choice, police opened fire, killing the four-year-old tiger. Soon afterwards, they found a third man. He was still alive, but his head and upper body had also been mauled.

Quite how a custom for many San Franciscans, a Christmas Day outing to the sprawling zoo in the south-west of the city, ended in a bloodbath was the focus of an investigation.

With one 17-year-old man dead and two others, aged 19 and 23, in a critical condition, the security of the zoo's tiger enclosure was under scrutiny.

Detectives last night told a news conference they were now treating the zoo as a crime scene, indicating they were investigating whether someone might have let the tiger out of her exhibit. Police are also looking into whether she had been taunted.

The attack took place shortly after 5pm, a time when no new visitors were being admitted, but during which dozens of people were still milling around before the zoo closed at 6pm.

Zoo officials are certain a door was not left open. Nonetheless, with her enclosure surrounded by a 15ft moat and 20ft walls, investigators are at a loss as to how she got out.

"There was no way out through the door," said Robert Jenkins, the zoo's director of animal care and conservation. "The animal appears to have climbed or otherwise leaped out of the enclosure."

The incident came a year after the same tiger reached through the iron bars of her cage and lacerated a female zookeeper's arms. After that incident, on 22 December last year, the zoo was fined £9,000 and erected tightened safety, including the installation of customised steel mesh over the tigers' cages and an increased distance between visitors and the cats.

"This is a tragic event for San Francisco," said the city's fire department spokesman, Lieutenant Ken Smith. "We pride ourselves in our zoo, and we pride ourselves in tourists coming and looking at our city."

Mayor Gavin Newsom said he was deeply saddened by the latest attack and that a thorough investigation was under way.

There are five tigers at the zoo, three Sumatrans and two Siberians. Initially, it had been feared as many as four animals had escaped.

CREEPING BACK FROM THE EDGE

SIBERIAN, or Amur, tigers are classified as a critically endangered species, with the WWF agency putting the global population at somewhere between 431 and 529.

Native in the far east of Asia, mainly China and Russia, there were just 40 of their kind in the 1940s, but extensive anti-poaching initiatives helped restore numbers to a modest level.

Though Tatiana weighed around 300lb, the average male weighs around 660lb.

They prey primarily on animals like wild boar, moose and red deer, but have also been known to hunt species dangerous in their own right, such as black bears and brown bears.