A woman with two children desperately tried to pull a man back from the edge of a tiger enclosure before he overpowered her and leaped inside, where he was fatally mauled after bowing and praying to the animal, witnesses said.
Scarlet Hogan, 21, who was visiting Yorkshire Wildlife Park with her boyfriend Anthony Hunt on Saturday, said the unidentified man was on all fours and appeared to be taking selfies with Altai the Siberian tiger before the attack. “Then when he got on all fours, he started praying. It was the strangest thing ever,” she said.
Hogan described the man’s demeanor as trance-like in the moments before the tiger turned on him. “Up until he got attacked, it was like he was in a trace, not in reality at all,” she said.
“The tiger looked a bit confused,” Hogan added, noting the animal’s initial reaction to the man’s presence in its enclosure.
Hunt told the outlet that a mother viewing the “Land of the Tigers” exhibit with her children had grabbed at the man in a last-ditch attempt to stop him. “He overpowered her and jumped off. She seemed really frightened,” he said. The couple said the mother later told them she had heard the man “saying something religious” before he went over the barrier.
Hogan and Hunt had earlier spotted the man dancing “erratically” in another area of the park but had not thought much of it at the time. Another witness, Marie Miller, said she saw him listening to music through AirPods and “happily enjoying seeing the tiger” shortly before the fatal leap.
Hogan gave a harrowing account of the attack itself, saying the man appeared almost welcoming of his fate. “He had arms wide open ready for the tiger to attack him. It was quite bad,” she said. “We were just stood there, frozen…the last thing we saw was the tiger’s jaw on his neck.”
Viral video shared online captured the tiger biting and clawing at the man’s back as he sat on the grass, raising his finger toward the animal and yelling at it in a futile attempt to fend off the assault.
South Yorkshire Police said the man was pronounced dead at the scene. His identity has not been publicly released.
The park closed for the remainder of the weekend following the incident, with a black screen erected around the enclosure. Yorkshire Wildlife Park said in a statement that its “emergency response procedures were immediately activated” and that it was working closely with authorities to determine exactly what happened. “The safety and wellbeing of our visitors, staff and animals remain our highest priority,” the park said.
The park also confirmed that Altai is “safe and well and will not be euthanized as a result of this incident.”
Audio footage obtained by a social media account captured the man minutes before his death asking a couple to take pictures of him with the tiger in the background, underscoring the apparent calm that preceded his erratic final actions.