A tiger was shot and killed at a zoo in Naples, Florida Wednesday evening after it seriously injured a man who entered an area of its enclosure. The man was not authorized to go inside the enclosure and was working at the Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens after it closed for a third-party cleaning service. The service’s employees are only allowed to clean the zoo’s restrooms and gift shop.
The man, who is in his 20s, either tried to pet or feed the animal, which he was not authorized to do so, the Collier County County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a Facebook post. The tiger reportedly grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him further into the enclosure after he put his arm through the fencing. “Initial reports indicate that the tiger grabbed the man’s arm and pulled it into the enclosure after the man traversed an initial fence barrier and put his arm through the fencing of the tiger enclosure,” the office’s statement reads.
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Deputies were called to the zoo just before 6:30 p.m. The first deputy who arrived kicked open the enclosure and tried to get the tiger to free the man’s arm. The tiger would not, and the deputy was “forced to shoot” the animal, the sheriff’s office said. The man was taken to a local hospital and was “seriously injured.”
The animal was a Malayan tiger and was killed in the shooting, a spokesperson for the Naples Zoo told ABC News. It was 8 years old and named Eko. The tiger came to Naples from the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle and was first shown to visitors in February 2020. “Eko is a great ambassador for his species. When guests see him, we hope they fall in love and want to learn how they can do their part to save his cousins in the wild,” reads a statement on the zoo’s website. The zoo was closed on Thursday and plans to reopen on Friday.
The Malayan tiger is a critically endangered species, native to the Malay Peninsula and in south Thailand. In 2015, the species was added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. It is estimated that less than 200 mature Malayan tigers are living in the wild. “The tigers are native to the forests and mangrove swamps in Malaysia and face threats such as habitat loss, poaching for their bones and skin, depletion of their prey, and tiger-human conflict,” the zoo notes.
