14 DAY TRIAL // David Villalobos, a 25-year-old man from Mahopac, New York, reportedly jumped into a tiger’s enclosure at the New York zoo, on Friday, and was immediately attacked by a 400-pound tiger.
Witnesses described that Villalobos jumped from a monorail circling the Bronx zoo, directly landing in one of the tiger enclosures of the Wild Asia exhibit.
Bachuta, an 11-year-old Siberian tiger, bit and clawed on the man’s back, arms and legs.
“The man received various bites or puncture wounds on his arms and legs and also on the top of his shoulder and his back.
What [tigers] typically do is grab a prey animal by the head or in the back of the neck, and then it's over very quickly,” Bronx Zoo director Jim Breheny stated to NBC News.
The man’s lung was punctured during the tiger attack, and he broke an arm and a leg, possibly in the 20 feet fall. He had managed to jump over the perimeter fence, the Daily Mail reports.
Zoo attendants managed to rescue Villalobos after 10 minutes, after distracting the tiger by spraying a fire extinguisher.
He had to crawl to safety under an electrified wire. As soon as the tiger was back in his cage, EMTs arrived at the scene and he was rushed to the Jacobi Hospital in New York.
The motivation for his gesture is not known at this time, but it is believed that he intended to kill himself. There is a possibility that he just wanted to approach and befriend the tiger.
"He wrote a lot of deep emotional things -- very religious, spiritual. I wouldn't say depressing. He was very in tune with his mind and religion," former classmate Paul Giarraputo said, after viewing Villalobos’s Facebook account.
The man had also uploaded pictures of tigers, and seemed to be fascinated by the animals.
Zoo director Jim Breheny reported that the tiger will not be put down, as he reacted normally in this situation and “did nothing wrong.”
"If the tiger really wanted to do harm to this individual he certainly would have had the time to do that," he explained.