Escaped tiger kills man before being shot dead by police
A WHITE tiger which escaped from a zoo during flooding has killed a man.
Marksmen shot the rare ‘albino’ tiger following yesterday’s attack in Tbilisi, Georgia, and its body was carried away on a stretcher.
Dozens of wild animals including bears, wolves and a hippo have run amok through the city after their enclosures were demolished by torrential rain on Sunday.
News of the attack emerged hours after the country’s government said it had been told by zookeepers that all the missing lions and tigers had been found dead.
The 40-year- old victim, named locally as Otar Tsukhishvili, owned a textile plant. He was mauled when he and three colleagues entered his company’s warehouse where the animal was hiding. ‘It was a white tiger, a big one. It attacked a man, it seized him by the throat,’ a witness told a local television station.
Mr Tsukhishvili suffered damage to his carotid artery and was taken to hospital, where he reportedly died of a heart attack.
Teimuraz Tsikoridze, chairman of the Georgian Society for the Protection and Safety of Animals, said: ‘Under such stress, animals can hide for two or three days.’ He warned that if any are still loose in the city, they may now be beginning to get hungry and could start to emerge from hiding places.
The white tiger was so dirty from the flood water that it was initially believed to be a lion.
Mr Tsukhishvili’s colleague, Alexander Shavbulashvili, said: ‘ We entered the depot and, suddenly, a white tiger rushed out of an adjacent room and attacked one of the workers, jumping at his throat and mauling him. We broke the window of another room to flee, and the sound of breaking glass must have scared it and it ran away.’
Last night Georgia’s interior minister, Vakhtang Gomelauri, confirmed the animal had been shot by police, adding: ‘We wanted to sedate it but it was very aggressive and we had to liquidate it.’
The country’s prime minister Irakli Garibashvili ordered zoo officials to make another assessment of how many of their 600 animals are unaccounted for. More than half are thought to have died.
At least 19 people have been killed in the flooding, caused by the weekend’s heavy rain.