San Francisco Zoo reopens 9 days after attack
SAN FRANCISCO — Under glowering skies today, visitors started streaming back into the San Francisco Zoo, which reopened nine days after a fatal tiger attack.
Within minutes, several visitors had placed bouquets and other mementos at a makeshift shrine just inside the zoo’s entrance.
A zoo spokeswoman said memorials would be welcome for both Carlos Sousa Jr., the San Jose man who died, and for Tatiana, the 4-year-old Siberian tiger who was shot by police after mauling Sousa and two friends who survived.
“Tatiana was always friendly,” said Susan Pettit, a Santa Clara homemaker who gingerly set down photographs, a stuffed animal and flowers in the tiger’s memory.
“The big cats were like my own kids,” said Pettit, who has visited the zoo once a week for three years. “I loved them all.”
A police investigation is aimed at determining just what prompted Tatiana to vault over the 12 1/2 -foot barrier around her enclosure.
The lions and tigers will be off-limits to the public until the expected completion of a higher fence in 30 days.
Mark Geragos, an attorney for the two brothers who survived, has denied speculation that the group provoked the animal. However, a report in the San Francisco Chronicle today quoted a visitor who said she saw a group of four young men taunting the lions the afternoon of the attack.
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