An escaped tiger, one of the many animals set free after the city zoo flooded earlier this week in Tbilisi, Georgia, was shot and killed Wednesday after it attacked and killed a man.
The unnamed victim was working in a company warehouse in the heart of Tbilisi when the tiger entered and attacked his throat, the
Ministry of Internal Affairs said, according to CNN. The 43-year-old man died before reaching the hospital.
“It was a white tiger, a big one,”
a witness told the Imedi Channel, according to The New York Times. “It attacked a man; it seized him by the throat."
Police and Special Tasks officers surrounded the warehouse and shot the tiger soon after when it tried to attack a police officer. The tiger had been
“liquidated,” a ministry spokeswoman confirmed to The Guardian.
Officials continued to search the warehouse throughout the day and determined that the tiger did not harm any other people. Zoo administrators said there is still one other tiger on the loose but they are not sure whether the animal is still alive.
On Tuesday, the zoo announced that all of the escaped lions and tigers had been found dead with the exception of one jaguar. The zoo also initially announced Wednesday that the deadly attack involved a lion, not a tiger. Nino Giorgobani, ministry spokesman, later corrected the announcement saying that it was indeed a tiger that attacked the man, The New York Times noted.
Before the incident, Georgia Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili had told the public that it was safe to leave their homes. On Wednesday, he apologized to the public of Tbilisi and said that zoo officials had given him incorrect information.
“Is it safe or not? We don’t know what to believe,” a Tbilisi resident said, reported The Guardian.
Since the floods, the public has criticized police and special forces for unnecessarily shooting the escaped animals. Some citizens report seeing police taking selfies with dead lions and tigers but a Georgian government spokeswoman assured citizens that “the police did the best they could and tried to save as many animals as possible,” according to The Guardian.
In Wednesday's tiger attack, “they had no possibility of using a tranquilizer,” announced another government spokesman.
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