A White tiger that escaped from a zoo in Tbilisi, Georgia, killed a man on Wednesday before being fatally shot by the police, according to NBC News.
Police are currently looking for a second tiger that escaped from the city’s zoo after floodwater destroyed enclosures at the Tbilisi zoo over the weekend, according to ABC News.
Less than a day before the man was killed by the tiger, officials had reportedly stated that most of the animals roaming the city after the floods had been captured.
“We entered the depot, and, suddenly, a white tiger rushed out of an adjacent room and attacked one of our workers,” the man’s colleague Alexander Shavbulashvili told The Associated Press.
“We broke the window of another room to flee, and the sound of breaking glass must have scared it and it ran away.”
Fewer than half of the zoo’s 600 inhabitants reportedly survived the flooding. A hippopotamus was reportedly among the escapees to be tranquilized and returned to the zoo.
One of the zoo’s penguins had reportedly been found after swimming roughly 37 miles along a river to reach the border, where it was stopped once people noticed its presence. Someone had reportedly been sent to collect the African penguin.
Mindia Janelidze, the head of the Georgian Crisis Control Center, reportedly reassured the public after zoo officials insisted that no animals remain at large. However, the Tbilisi Zoo had reportedly issued a statement on Tuesday stating that the zoo was missing a tiger, striped hyena and bear.
A spokeswoman for the zoo had reportedly stated that all the animals that escaped had been captured or accounted for, except for one jaguar, and that all seven of its tigers had been found dead.
The zoo’s director, Zurab Gurielidze, reportedly turned himself in to the police, stating that it was his fault. He has reportedly since been released.
