Siegfried and Roy: Doctor Who Treated Roy Horn’s Infamous Tiger Bite Reveals ‘His Heart Stopped Multiple Times’

Roy Horn, one half of the famous Las Vegas “Siegfried and Roy” shows, came closer to dying from a tiger bite than most people realize. On Oct. 3, 2003, Horn was brought to the University Medical Center in Vegas where surgeon Dr. Allan MacIntyre was awaiting the performer along with many of his colleagues.

“They don’t tell you that they’re bringing in a celebrity,” MacIntyre said. “They say we have male patient that has been bitten by a tiger in respiratory distress. They’ll say it’s a Class One activation, which means everybody presents to the trauma bay.”

Horn suffered a stroke and was bit by one of his tiger’s, Mantecore, after he fell on the animal’s paw. The tiger grabbed Horn up by his neck and carried him offstage in an apparent attempt to help him.

When Horn arrived, doctors discovered that he had serious bite wounds around his neck. The tiger’s teeth had gone in so deep that they’d caused major internal bleeding and it was blocking Horn’s airway.

“You’ve got to deal with that first. If you’re not breathing for over, like, three minutes, you will have irreversible brain death. A tiger bite to the neck. We don’t see that on a daily basis like a gunshot wound, so you have no idea what to expect,” MacIntyre said.

Horn was rushed in for emergency surgery. Trauma surgeon Dr. Jay Coates said Horn died at least once during the operation. “We had to operate on his neck where the wounds were at and control the bleeding,” Dr. Coates said. “Roy was in such distress from his airway — loss of airway — that his heart stopped multiple times,” MacIntyre said. “He actually flatlined…or died. We lost vital signs on him.”

About a month after being initially admitted, Horn was able to leave the hospital, but he still had a long road of recovery and rehab ahead of him. “You have to literally go back to, like, when you were an infant, and learn how to walk again, and how to talk again and how to swallow, and [Horn’s] drive, I believe, is what got him through this,” MacIntyre said.

Siegfried and Roy officially retired from show business in 2010. Mantecore died in March 2014.