Two days after a man was mauled to death by tigers at a Ningbo zoo, the deceased man’s relatives have traveled to Ningbo, arguing that the zoo should take some of the blame for the “gaps” in security that led to the man scaling two 3-meter-tall walls in order to avoid paying for an entrance ticket, and mistakenly ending up inside the tiger enclosure.
“[The zoo] should not give people the opportunity to climb over,” one relative told Pear Video, accusing the Ningbo Youngor Zoo of not having strict enough surveillance measures along its outer perimeter.
The man surnamed Zhang was visiting the zoo with his wife, kids, his coworker surnamed Li and Li’s wife. Li said that while the women and children bought tickets and entered the zoo normally, both the men decided to try their luck scaling the zoo’s 3-meter-tall outer wall, despite warnings and wire netting.
Once over, Zhang continued on, scaling the next 3-meter wall in their path, unassumingly hopping down inside the tiger enclosure. Li did not follow his friend.
What happened next was horrifyingly caught on video. Footage circulating online show a pack of tigers surrounding Zhang before staff used fireworks and water guns to scare them away. However, one tiger remained unperturbed and continued to drag Zhang away. Eventually, workers shot and killed the tiger and carried Zhang out of the enclosure. In total, the rescue took over an hour to complete and occurred with Zhang’s wife and kids watching.
Zhang was then rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment where he succumbed to his injuries and died.
His younger brother told Pear Video that this puts the deceased man’s family in an extremely tough place. Zhang was supporting his wife and two children, along with his two parents, and his family’s financial situation was already unstable — which might help to explain why he was so reluctant to pay the zoo’s 130 RMB entry fee.
Still, Zhang and his family have received little support from Chinese netizens who believe that they are merely setting the stage to demand a lucrative compensation payment from the zoo.
“This entire family should be thrown to the tigers as compensation for the tiger family’s loss,” suggested one Weibo user.
Of course, there is precedent here. Last November, the woman who infamously got out of her vehicle inside Beijing’s Badaling Wildlife Park only to be mauled by one of its tigers announced that she was suing the park for 1.557 million yuan in compensation.
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