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Two days after his son was mauled to death by an escaped Siberian tiger at the San Francisco Zoo, Carlos Sousa Sr. will meet with investigators Thursday as he searches for an explanation of how the tragedy could have happened.
“Right now, I don’t have any answers to this,” the grief-stricken father told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer on Thursday morning from his home in San Jose, Calif.
“I just know I lost my son,” he continued, his voice choked with emotion. “And it hurts.”
Zoo managers around the country are also eager to know how the 4-year-old female tiger named Tatiana escaped from an enclosure that was encircled by a 20-foot-wide moat and a sheer 18-foot-high wall. The Christmas Day mauling of 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. is the first time that a big cat has ever killed a zoo patron in this country, zoo officials say.
“This is a once-in-a-century event,” Satch Krantz, chairman of the National Association of Zoos and Aquariums, told TODAY’s Ann Curry in a separate interview on Thursday. Speaking from the zoo he runs in Columbia, S.C., he added, “Large cats have been kept in zoos behind moats for roughly 100 years. I can tell you in 100 years, it’s never happened. Zoos are safe, they’ve always been safe. This is a tragedy of historical proportions.”
It’s unlikely that investigators will be able to tell Sousa exactly what happened around 5 p.m. on Christmas Day, when his son and two friends were among an estimated 20 people in the zoo as it was preparing to close for the day. The zoo does not have surveillance cameras, and police are hoping the two unidentified brothers, aged 19 and 23, that Carlos Sousa Jr. was with can tell them what happened in the moments leading up to the tiger’s escape.
Police found Sousa’s body near the tiger enclosure. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The two brothers were about 300 yards away in front of a café, where they were both mauled by the tiger before police, responding to 911 calls, drew the tiger’s attention and shot and killed it. The brothers underwent several rounds of surgery to repair serious gashes and bites and are expected to recover.
Investigators were not even sure how the tiger, which last year had mauled the arm of a keeper who had stuck her arm in the enclosure while feeding the animal, escaped. The walls and moats that are standard in tiger enclosures are supposed to be too wide and high for animals that weigh more than 300 pounds to jump over.
There has been speculation that someone may have put a board across the moat to help Tatiana escape or that a door to the enclosure may have been left open.
Investigators are also trying to determine whether Sousa or his companions had taunted the tiger. The “San Francisco Chronicle,” citing unnamed police sources, reported on Thursday that one or more of the young men may have climbed over a fence on top of the enclosure and dangled a leg over the moat, taunting the tiger.
“It’s hard to believe somebody would open a gate to do something idiotic like that to let an animal loose,” Carlos Sousa Sr. told Lauer. “It’s not hard to believe a tiger like that could jump 18 feet. I want an answer.”
He has heard the speculation about the animal possibly being taunted. “I’m not saying my son could have been taunting,” he said. “I don’t know. Those two wounded boys, they should have the answer. I’m just waiting to find out myself.”
Special bond
Sousa and his wife, Marilza Sousa, are separated but remain close. She has a son and a daughter by another marriage whom Carlos Sousa said he loves like his own children. But, he said, he had a special bond with Carlos Jr.
The young man had spent Christmas Eve with his mother, and had talked to his father on Christmas morning, when Sousa told him to be sure to stop in to see his mother that evening. When he didn’t show up at his mother’s house for dinner and to open Christmas gifts, the parents started calling friends and relatives.
They saw reports of the tiger attack at the zoo, but never imagined their son might have been involved.
A construction manager, Sousa went to work that night, where he said, “I got a call from my boss. He said, ‘Go home. It’s an emergency.’ ”
He called his wife’s home, where his sister-in-law answered the phone and said, “ ‘Come home. Carlos has been in a bad accident. I asked, ‘Is he alive?’ She said yes. I was scared.”
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The Sousas have expressed anger at zoo officials in other interviews because of the lack of information they’ve received. They also don’t understand how a tiger could escape. “They need to protect the people from these animals and they need to protect the animals from the people,” Sousa said.
Krantz agrees. “We’re all waiting very anxiously to see the outcome of the investigation,” the zoo director said.
He said that 150 million people a year visit zoos and aquariums in the United States, which is more than the number who attend all professional sporting events.
“If there’s any outcome that leads us to believe this animal was able to make a 20-foot vertical leap, yes, we will change our criteria,” he said.
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