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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Siberian tiger at Calgary zoo mauls intruder
CALGARY -- A Siberian tiger that brutally mauled a man Monday morning was only doing what comes naturally, say Calgary zoo officials.
"Vitali did nothing wrong. It's his natural behaviour. They broke into his home," said zookeeper Tim Sinclair-Smith later in the day.
Just after 1 a.m. local time Monday, a pair of 27-year-old men scaled the zoo's 2.4-metre-high fence near the west public gate. Inside, they hopped another one-metre-high fence designed to keep the public at a safe distance from the Siberian tiger enclosure.
While the man was standing in front of a second fence that keeps the cats secure, a two-year-old male tiger named Vitali caught his arm through the wires, biting and swiping at him. The man's friend managed to free him and the pair scrambled to safety.
"I think it's fair to say that, if anybody puts their mind to it, they can breach any kind of security -- and that certainly seems to be the case here," said the zoo's director, Grahame Newton.
The motive behind Monday's dangerous stunt at the zoo, which sent one man to hospital with serious injuries, remains a mystery.
-- Canwest News Service
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 6, 2009 A7
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