Posted on 01/18/2008 3:56:46 AM PST by nikos1121
SAN FRANCISCO — One of the three victims of San Francisco Zoo tiger attack was intoxicated and admitted to yelling and waving at the animal while standing atop the railing of the big cat enclosure, police said in court documents filed Thursday.
Paul Dhaliwal, 19, told the father of Carlos Sousa Jr., 17, who was killed, that the three yelled and waved at the tiger but insisted they never threw anything into its pen to provoke the cat, according to a search warrant affidavit obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle.
"As a result of this investigation, (police believe) that the tiger may have been taunted/agitated by its eventual victims," according to Inspector Valerie Matthews, who prepared the affidavit. Police believe that "this factor contributed to the tiger escaping from its enclosure and attacking its victims," she said.
Additional reporting and video from KTVU FOX San Francisco
Sousa's father, Carlos Sousa Sr., said Dhaliwal told him the three stood on a 3-foot-tall metal railing a few feet from the edge of the tiger moat. "When they got down they heard a noise in the bushes, and the tiger was jumping out of the bushes on him (Paul Dhaliwal)," the documents said.
Police found a partial shoe print that matched Paul Dhaliwal's on top of the railing, Matthews said in the documents.
The affidavit also cites multiple reports of a group of young men taunting animals at the zoo, the Chronicle reported.
Mark Geragos, an attorney for the Dhaliwal brothers, did not immediately return a call late Thursday by The Associated Press for comment. He has repeatedly said they did not taunt the tiger.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I may be unique in my thought here, but it shouldn’t matter if they were taunting the animal or not.
If that animal got out of its enclosure on its own then there is a problem with the enclosure and the zoo should be held responsible.
When you walk into a zoo, you should have the reasonable expectation of being able to walk away unmauled, even if there is someone teasing an animal.
Nah. You aren’t alone. Mr. Brightside should be in here soon. He doesn’t subscribe to Darwin’s Law in this case either.
Geragos lied? Who knew?
If I were on the jury for this civil suit, not a penny for the tiger taunters/agitators. I feel sad that a beautiful animal had to be killed. I have no sympathy for the punk that was killed, or for his two punk friends that were mauled.
Where is the zoo security to make sure that the animals aren’t being taunted and people aren’t getting too close to the animals?
Well, you are not alone.
Who cares if they were taunting an animal?
I certainly don’t!
If they were in the wilds of Africa then that would be different, but this was a ZOO, for Christ’s sake!
A red herring. The wall was not high enough. Period.
I agree. You see it all the time in zoos. People want to see the animal get up and move around. And I don’t care how stupid the kids might have been, it was the zoos responsibility to keep the animal secure under any circumstamce.
I’ve said the following many times on many threads. Let me run this by you...
...you’re right. The damn tigers should be confined to their enclosures no matter what’s going on in the outside world.
But these fine, fine fellows whose parents must be so damn proud of them, taunted the tiger and scuttlebutt has it that one of them was leaning over into the tiger’s enclosure so far that when the tiger sprung to attack the tormenters it actually used this guy as a human ladder to get out of the pit.
Now...Mark Geragos is one sweet and noble man and no doubt he’s representing those boys out of the goodness of his heart and expects no recompense. But some suspect that these young men intend to SUE the zoo and perhaps Geragos might get some of the dough.
One young man died as a result of his idiocy and another was injured. They had a good scare and hopefully learned a lesson. One magnificent animal is dead that should be alive and happy as we type.
Perhaps it would be best if these boys didn’t get a huge financial reward for their bad behavior and don’t forget the very odd combination of a wall scaled by a tiger with a little help from a human body that shouldn’t, oughta hadda been there.
Hardly like those innocents were walking by the tiger enclosure minding their own business when a big beast jumped out at them and attacked them.
Thus it’s necessary, in terms of a CIVIL suit more than a criminal suit in this matter, to ascertain if perhaps those boys might have bought some of their misery on themselves.
The San Fran zoo is very badly run with a zoo director pulling in 300K a year for doing essentially nothing. The wall enclosing the tiger was not high enough although there’s that human ladder thing. For sure the zoo wasn’t without blame.
But those boys do not deserve to become millionaires, not to mention Geragos who is known world wide as a fine humanitarian and we know he won’t ask but for a small pittance for his clients’ trouble. One boy is dead and they paid a price for their bad behavior.
Now do they, and the very fine and personable Mark Geragos, really deserve to become millionaires for what they did?
Finally, what does the beautiful but dead Tatiana get?
I agree, the animal was a threat to others at the zoo as well. When you design for safety, you have to take into account what I call "the moron factor", especially when the moron will put others at risk.
I am shocked, shocked I tell you. BTW, the zoo's job is to protect the animals from the visitors just as much as it is to protect the visitors from the animals.
The boys obviously caused something that should never have been allowed to happen. Zoo animals simply are not allowed to attack the patrons, no matter how stupidly they behave. It's bad for business. So, I think these wisenheimers are going to collect the Big Lotto on this one. And the ever-truthful Geragos could use a win right about now.
And why am I the only guy on Freep who thinks it a bit ironic that these young Indian fellows had to come to San Francisco to be attacked by a tiger? Would it not have been cheaper all the way around if their parents had remained in India and encouraged the kids to taunt a local tiger?
The tiger died for nothing, and yet these fine examples of human waste continue to live.
I’m glad it was a taunter who got killed, and not a child who was standing near-by. The zoo needs to hurt through the pocketbook, but shouldn’t pay to louts who were, oh, 50% responsible if I had to apportion blame.
Exactly. It is the zoo’s responsibility to ensure that the animals cannot escape its confinement, no matter what. There will always be idiots among the visitor crowd.
As an aside, I had been to the Singapore Night Safari / Zoo a few months ago, and they have a fence/cage -free moat system separating the animals from the visitors.
IMHO, the confinements of the the hyenas and the tigers are a disaster waiting to happen.
People keep forgetting about the dead Titiana who did nothing wrong.
Maybe those fine boys, whose parents must be so damn proud of them, should be sued by the zoo for HER death.
These animals get taunted every day. How many fathers have put their little one on the railing so they can see better.
Well that’s another thing...
....suppose that tiger which did escape thanks to those fine boys whose parents are so proud of them, and attacked other INNOCENT people?
Those boys caused that problem and their recompense should be maybe a return of medical expenses. For sure Mark Geragos who....well does this fellow deserve millions?
And again....who has to pay for the dead tiger?
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