Man Killed by Tiger After Entering Enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park

A man is dead after entering the tiger enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, just outside Doncaster, and being attacked by one of the animals on Saturday afternoon.

South Yorkshire Police took the first report at 1.35pm. Ambulance crews went in, and Yorkshire Air Ambulance was sent too, but he died where he was. The park was evacuated. Officers were still there late into the evening.

Rumours about the tiger's condition got going fast, so police dealt with them in their statement. The animal was uninjured. It stayed in the enclosure from start to finish. There is no wider risk to the public, they said.

The man has not been named. His family has been told and specialist officers are supporting them.

What nobody has explained is how he got in. Or whether he worked at the park, had come as a visitor, or was somebody else altogether. Police will say only that inquiries are under way, and the park says it is working with the authorities to establish exactly what happened.

Local media pulled together accounts from people who were there. A black screen went up around the enclosure, they said. Some heard what they took to be five shots shortly before everyone was moved out. The Star newspaper reported that the noises were believed to be a gas canister and tranquilliser darts, not gunfire.

None of that appears in anything the police have published. Treat it as unconfirmed.

Video that seems to show the man inside the enclosure before the attack has been shared on social media. Police know about it. They want people to stop passing it around, and it's easy to see why: his relatives could come across it without ever looking for it

On Saturday the park confirmed a serious incident at the tiger enclosure and said its emergency procedures had been triggered straight away. Safety of visitors, staff and animals comes first, it added. The gates shut for the rest of the day and stayed shut on Sunday.

Then a second message on Sunday, about the tiger. Altai, the Amur tiger involved, is safe and well and will not be euthanised. The park said a great many people had been in touch asking after him.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park opened in April 2009. The tiger reserve came two years later: about two acres, purpose-built for Amur tigers, which most people know as Siberian tigers. They're the biggest cats in the world and they're endangered. Visitors look down on the animals from a raised walkway roughly 300 metres long.

Two tigers live there. Tschuna was already at the park when Altai arrived from Norway to join her, a trip of more than 1,100 miles. The park said at the time that the two would be introduced when the time was right, and his previous keeper in Norway had called him a calm tiger. The park describes both animals as part of its conservation work for the species, and says it hopes Altai can act as an ambassador for tigers in the wild.

Fatal tiger attacks at British parks don't happen often. When they have, the victims were keepers working inside enclosures, and the questions afterwards were about procedures and barriers.

This one looks different, going on what's public so far. Nobody has said the man worked there. Nothing released yet explains how a person ended up inside a reserve built for tigers on an afternoon when the park was open and visitors were on site.

Police are piecing together the sequence of events. There are no findings yet and the man's identity has not been made public. The park said it would remain closed on Sunday, and officers carried on with their inquiries at the site. No reopening date has been given in any of the statements published so far.

Police have asked that the footage not be shared. They have not said what they want from people who were in the park at the time.