Mauro Lagiard, 72-year-old Italian man killed by three tigers at defnuct zoo
A man was killed by three tigers in a closed-down zoo in northern Italy as he attempted to feed them and entered their cage, media reports said on Tuesday which were circulated by Reuters.
2010 Photo/Bill Ebbesen via wikimedia commons
Mauro Lagiard, age 72, was feeding the group of tigers chicken meatballs on Tuesday when they attacked him at the zoo in Pinerolo near Turin. The man’s wife raised the alarm, but watched helplessly as her husband was dragged 100 feet by the predators.
According to the Daily Mail, police said his dismembered body was found near the tigers’ water trough.
The couple lived on site near the tigers’ enclosure in a camper van. The retired zoo keeper was ‘utterly fearless’ and devoted to the animals according to reports in the Italian media.
The tiger that attacked first, Samir, was the one he loved the most, according to reports, even though the same animal had attacked him before two years ago causing him to spend eight months in hospital.
At the time the faithful owner blamed himself, saying he was wearing aftershave which had confused the animal. It was a miracle’ that he had survived, he said.
“My husband and Samir did not get on. If I had gone it would never have happened,” his wife Carla Lagiard stated in the Daily Mail report.
The zoo was closed in 2009 because of financial difficulties and the owners had not managed to relocate the nine tigers and leopard kept there.
