Emotional call describes tiger attack

[kskiska]

Source: Mercury news

(snip)

While the three of them were talking and laughing, he said, the tiger sprang over the fence, attacking him first - not his 23-year-old brother, Kulbir, as has been reported - and ripping a long gash across his skull.

Sousa and Dhaliwal's older brother were waving their arms to distract the tiger when it turned on Sousa and "just grabbed him," Dhaliwal told Sousa's mother.

"The mouth of the tiger just opened and got the neck," he said, "and killed him right there."

(snip)

"All this is inside my heart," Dhaliwal told her, "and I can't sleep or close my eyes."

When he does, he told her, all he sees is the tiger's jaws clamping down on his best friend's neck. He hears the screams.

"He said he wished it was him" that was killed, she said, because the images replaying in his head are "harder than to be dead."

Edited for more detailed story.

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_7930157?source=most_viewed

[atreides1]

1. Maybe ne's sincere, maybe he's not.

Does anyone here really think that if they had taunted the tiger that they would admit to it? If they had, then that would mean that they were responsible for the death of their friend!!!

Maybe his reason for not calling sooner is valid, but with Geragos as his attorney, I have my doubts.

I'm going to wait until the police are done with their investigation, that's when most questions will be answered.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. I thought I read the police investigation was over and that they found no 'evidence' of

taunting.

[kskiska]

3. No. There's a hearing on Friday

to determine whether their impounded car and cell phones can be examined. It seems to be a reasonable request, since a lawsuit is inevitable.

[daleo]

4. Unless they filmed themselves "taunting" the tiger I don't know that this would prove much

It is hard to believe the cell phones would be very useful. Even if they were photographing each other at the time of the attack, it probably wouldn't be conclusive. I guess we will see (unless the cell phones are exculpatory, in which case I doubt we will hear about it).

[atreides1]

5. I've Been Looking

I haven't found any news report that indicates that the investigation is over.

I did find this at www.ktvu.com:


Geragos' letter also emphasized his clients have cooperated fully with the police.

He said that San Francisco police, who have an ongoing investigation into the mauling, have told him they will not pursue criminal charges against the brothers. However, police spokesman Sgt. Steve Mannina said Monday that no decision has been made on whether to seek charges in the case.

The city attorney claims the brothers have refused to let investigators examine the contents of their phones.

"There's no evidence of taunting, and they've been cooperative," Geragos said. "All of this is a concerted effort to destroy their reputation in the public mind."

Matt Dorsey, spokesman for the city attorney's office, said Monday that Geragos has still not responded to the office's request to preserve evidence found in the brothers' cell phones.

"We've received the letter, but our question hasn't been answered," Dorsey said.


It seems that Mr. Geragos is doing what some lawyers do, laying down a smoke screen and trying to confuse the public like he did with Scott Peterson!

[pnwmom]

11. The zoo's enclosure should have been built to handle an enraged tiger.

Suppose there was "taunting" involved -- by an eight year old? Would that child have deserved to die?

What if other people had been annoying the tiger all day, and when those three showed up laughing, it was the last straw?

Bottom line, that enclosure should have been built to withstand a leaping tiger, and it wasn't, and they knew it. I don't care what made the tiger leap.

[LisaL]

24. Not so.

"Two brothers injured in a Christmas Day tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo will not face charges, the lead investigator in the case told CNN Monday.

San Francisco Police Inspector Valerie Matthews said the investigation had found no evidence that Paul and Kulbir Dhaliwal taunted a 350-pound tiger that apparently scaled a 12½ foot wall surrounding its enclosure."


http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/07/tiger.attack/index.html

[QUALAR]

6. SLINGSHOT

Original reports made reference to a slingshot. Was one found at the scene or not?

[uppityperson]

7. No. This was a rumor put forth by 1 RW newspaper.

Police have said no slingshot was involved.

[Suich]

23. Hey, QUALAR!!!

Welcome to DU!

:party: :bounce: :toast: :bounce: :party:

[CreekDog]

8. the enclosure should have been secure to prevent escape

taunting or not.

it wasn't and it sounds like it took a long time for help to arrive, the stupid zoo even kept the police from coming in some 10-20 minutes i've read.

whether the brothers are knuckleheads or not, the zoo's at fault, that's pretty easy to see.

ask yourselves this: had these guys taunted the tiger and it escaped and attacked someone else, someone in another party, whose fault would that be? the zoo's of course. and the zoo is run by the highest paid quasi public official in SF.

[pnwmom]

9. Exactly. I don't care if they taunted it or not.

Little kids go through that zoo every day, and any of them could have been in danger if they had been the one to throw pinecones, or whatever it was that happened.

Another possibility is that people before this group of young men had been teasing the tiger, and when these three showed up laughing, the tiger exploded.

But it doesn't matter. With the enclosure too short, it was PREDICTABLE that one day a tiger would get out. It was only a question of when.

And the zoo employees behavior afterwards -- locking the injured men out of the cafe and assuming that they were nutcases -- was inexcusable.

[kskiska]

10. Not exactly the boys next door

Looks like Geragos sent someone out shopping. I'm surprised he didn't put them in fuzzy pastel sweaters like the Menendez boys.

[pnwmom]

12. What does that have to do with ANYTHING? It's like what they were saying

about the Duke students: "they're not choirboys."

The Duke students didn't deserve to be falsely charged simply because they weren't choirboys.
The boy here who was killed didn't deserve it for not looking like "the boy next door."

I don't care what these three might have done to the tiger -- they didn't deserve a death sentence. Anyone would have rationally thought that the tiger enclosure had been built properly to keep the tigers inside, but it wasn't.

By the way, in some neighborhoods these three WOULD look like "the boy next door." Apparently not in your neighborhood. So?

[Hekate]

27. I'm with you, pnwmom. My heart hurts for those young guys and their families

So far, all the stuff that's been said about their behavior at the zoo has been rumor-mongering. But even if true, did they deserve to die or be maimed, to have PTSD from watching a friend die?

My local zoo has a lion enclosure that as near as I can tell is totally secure. The SF Zoo -- which has a really dubious history over quite a few years -- did not have an up-to-standard enclosure for its big cats.

As for the photo where they're posing -- nothing I've read so far has even hinted that they had gang affiliations. Kids like to pose....

Hekate

[daleo]

26. I don't get what you are saying

Is there something wrong with their clothes? I am not from L.A. (or even the U.S.). They look fine to me. Are you claiming their dress indicates gang involvment or something like that?

[kskiska]

28. The Dhaliwal brothers have been in trouble before. They have a court date

this month for being drunk and disorderly and acting belligerently toward the police last October. They kicked out a partition in a police car. When police questioned them at the zoo they refused to even give the name of the dead boy, much less their own names. Their neighbors have complained repeatedly about them. The paramedics in the ambulance who took them from the zoo say they overheard the older one tell his brother, "Don't tell them what we did." There's a MySpace page that gives some insight into this group. A little googling will find it.

I feel sorry for the dead boy and his parents. From what's known, Carlos did not contribute to what eventually happened. A witness left the zoo after observing their behavior at the lion's area, which caused her to leave, but she said that Carlos even looked at her apologetically at his friends' actions.

Yes. Their pre-funeral dress and posture indicates they're gangbangers.

I don't think this case will be the end of these boys' problems.

Just my opinion.

UPDATE:

Evidence in car may point to drug use, tiger taunting, documents state

The San Francisco City Attorney's Office contends the car of the two brothers who survived the tiger attack at San Francisco Zoo contains "apparent evidence of drug use" and may have evidence linking the men to objects found inside the tiger's enclosure, according to court documents.

That could help show the victims pelted or taunted the tiger that escaped and killed a San Jose teen, the documents state. The survivors have denied any wrongdoing.

While a police investigation into such accusations has been described as "inactive" by city officials, any evidence that the survivors teased the big cat could be used to defend the city and zoo against any lawsuits filed by the victims, said a spokesman for the City Attorney's Office.

Also in the new documents is an account by a zoo security guard, who said two young men in hooded sweatshirts sought to take the car from the zoo parking lot the day after the Christmas Day attack. They were denied entry by security guards, according to a statement a guard filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court.

The young men who tried to retrieve the car described themselves as friends of Paul Dhaliwal, 19, and Kulbir Dhaliwal, 23 - brothers who were injured in the attack that killed Paul Dhaliwal's close friend, 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr.

more…
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/10/BAD9UDG16.DTL

[pnwmom]

29. They "refused" to give names. I bet anything they were in shock,

considering that one of them had a gash in his head from a tiger, and both had just witnessed their friend being killed.

I don't care what scrapes they have been involved in, what rumors could be found googling about them, or whether they had been drinking or ANYTHING about their behavior. Bottom line: they didn't jump inside the tiger's den. The tiger got out.

The fact is that a properly designed enclosure would keep the tiger in at all times, no matter how much a tiger was provoked -- in fact, especially if a tiger were provoked. There are young kids going through the zoo all day long and you have to count on the fact that kids might think it is fun to act tough with the wild animals. I'm not saying that parents should let them, but zoo facilities need to be designed to contain animals NO MATTER WHAT.

Would you feel safe ever going to a zoo knowing that your own safety was predicated on NONE of the other visitors EVER deciding to "taunt" one of the carnivores?

We don't know who or what or IF anything provoked the tiger. Maybe people had been annoying it all day. Maybe someone else had been there just before the boys. Maybe the boys did taunt it. But the tiger could just as easily have killed anyone else it ran into that day, and there was a whole half hour wasted while the zoo people assumed that the boys -- one of whom was bleeding from the head -- were nutcases.

[jberryhill]

31. The tiger was no doubt an avid reader of court documents....

...and was enraged to be visited by people with arrest records. Normally, no one with an arrest record is allowed into a zoo.

In order to visit a zoo, one needs a background check and a psychological evaluation, to reduce the risk of being mauled by a TIGER!

[kskiska]

13. No one really knows how high tigers can jump

How High Can They Jump? Tiger Strength Reconsidered

(snip)

Among the questions experts are now asking: How high can tigers jump? And have zoos and sanctuaries dangerously underestimated tigers?

That is to say: Are the walls high enough?

"We are evaluating that right now," said Vernon Weir, director of the American Sanctuary Association, which has about 35 members, only a few of which have big cats. The ASA accredits sanctuaries and in the past recommended 12-foot (4-meter) fences for tigers.

Similarly the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, which accredits the nation's zoos, may adjust its 16.4-foot (5-meter) wall-height recommendation for tigers once it learns fully what happened in San Francisco, spokesperson Steve Feldman said.

(snip)

Animal experts said they aren't aware of any hard numbers about the precise leaping ability of tigers. They said it depends on the animal and whether it has been taunted, as may have happened in the San Francisco tragedy.

more…
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080110-AP-tigers.html

[diane in sf]

14. My little housecat could jump about 5 feet--5 times his own height.

[pnwmom]

16. No, but the zoo knew that it's enclosures didn't meet the standards

of the relevant accreditation body. It may turn out that even those standards are inadequate, but there is no excuse for not meeting the ones already in place.

[kskiska]

19. But they did pass the inspections since 1940.

Administrators surely changed numerous times since then. It's possible that with the passage of time it was assumed the standards were met since the inspectors didn't raise any objections, and there was no reason to take another look at the dimensions of the wall. Certainly the zoo will have to pay out, but it could have been negligence on the part of the inspectors and the zoo. It wasn't necessarily deliberate.

[pnwmom]

20. You're right, the inspectors share the responsibility, IMO. And I do think it

was negligence, not deliberate.

But when I take a child into the zoo, I assume it's going to be a safe place -- even if some idiots have been "taunting" the animals. I don't want to have to fear that a tiger is going to get loose and go on the prowl.

[downindixie]

15. I thought the police had already

searched the car and now there is a hearing to find out if they can,remember it was reported that an empty voka bottle was found. Why would they want to search the cell phones,did they use them to taunt the tiger? The tiger climbed out of its pen,the zoo has responsiblity for that,nothing can change that fact!

[kskiska]

17. If it can be proven they taunted the tiger

it could affect the amount of money they're awarded in a lawsuit. They may have pictures on their cellphones, perhaps of the brothers provoking the animal(s).

[pnwmom]

22. It shouldn't. A reasonable person would think that the tiger enclosure

should be able to hold the tigers securely, even if a tiger was provoked. A reasonable person wouldn't think that making noises at a tiger in a zoo enclosure or throwing pinecones would be putting people's lives in danger.

Suppose you were in the area when someone ELSE taunted a tiger. Wouldn't you want that enclosure to be high enough so that tiger wouldn't jump out and run around the zoo?

Have you ever seen in a sign in the zoo that said: don't tease the animals or they might jump out and kill somebody?

[jberryhill]

30. I doubt that

The standard in situations involving wild animals is strict liability - there is no contributory or comparative negligence principle in strict liability situations.

Passing inspections, standards, etc. - none of that matters. What matters is that a tiger escaped its enclosure and got into a public area. That is not something that is to be tolerated under any circumstances at any zoo, circus, etc.

[ileus]

18. we know they done something to provoke and now they're gonna be rewarded for it.

[pnwmom]

21. One of them was KILLED. Nothing they get now will make up for that.

And that tiger could have killed anyone in its path. We're lucky it didn't kill a few small children when it was running loose, since the idiot zoo employees thought the young men were mental cases and waited a half hour to call in help.

[LisaL]

25. You know what?

Since police apparently found no evidence of taunting, what exactly are you basing your claim on? Sixth sense?

[Phoonzang]

32. A cute fuzzy animal

would never hurt a human, don't you know. It would just HAVE to have a reason. Besides being a killing machine.