A British man killed this weekend by a zoo tiger was mentally “vulnerable” and behaved bizarrely before and during his grisly encounter, police and witnesses said.
William Chapman, described in media reports as “in his early 20s,” was seen laughing and dancing before he hopped the barriers separating guests at Yorkshire Wildlife Park from its Land of the Tigers exhibit.
Chapman suffered from “significant mental illness,” his family wrote in a statement.
In audio captured a few minutes before Chapman’s 1:30 pm death on Oct. 10, the late Briton handed his smartphone to another visitor and asked the woman to take photos of him with the tiger in the background.
“Thank you, lady,” he’s heard saying on the recording before he climbed the barriers in front of horrified guests and dropped into the enclosure housing Altai, an Amur tiger who just turned five years old about two weeks ago.
The encounter took an even stranger turn from there as Chapman, who was live-streaming to Instagram, seemed to welcome Altai. The curious big cat hopped down from a wooden platform where he’d been soaking up the sun and padded unhurriedly toward Chapman, who spread his arms theatrically.
“It looked like a performance,” bystander Anthony Hunt said. “He got down where everyone could see him in the main viewing area. He was on all fours, praying and bowing down to the tiger. It was like he was waiting for the tiger.”
Still images show Altai standing in a confused, non-aggressive posture, with telltale “helicopter ears” indicating curiosity and hesitation about how to respond.
Chapman’s behavior didn’t fit Altai’s cognitive script.
The tiger’s hardwired instincts told him incursions from other members of his species are threats. His experiences in captivity told him humans are caretakers who show up at predictable times as part of a daily routine to feed him, repair his enclosure or introduce enrichment items. This was something entirely new.
While I’ve learned my lesson when it comes to watching video of things I can’t unsee and have no desire to watch footage of a man’s life ending in a violent mauling, I did watch short clips of the preceding moments. They were compiled from recordings by bystanders and Chapman’s own feed.
The moment the situation changed was unambiguous, and you can see exactly when Altai became overstimulated and his predatory drive kicked in: Chapman dropped to all fours, reducing his physical profile until he resembled prey, and the panicked screams from the crowd of onlookers pushed Altai into overstimulation and hypervigilance.
He knew the encounter had taken a turn, and that’s when he took his first few exploratory swipes, still pulling his punches as he tried to figure out what was happening.
Chapman responded by assuming a defensive posture, raising a finger to the big cat while shouting “No! No!” and chiding him for being “naughty.” To the tiger, Chapman confirmed he was prey.
At the same time the screams from above grew louder. Altai’s predatory instincts were fully engaged, and according to reports that’s when he mauled Chapman and delivered a kill bite to the UK man’s neck.
Zookeepers who rushed to the scene fired warning shots, sending Altai scurrying for the safety of his den. A medical airlift helicopter arrived a few minutes later, but by then it was too late. Chapman had bled out and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Authorities erected screens to conceal the carnage as staff closed the zoo. Footage of guests leaving showed bystanders in shock, discussing what they’d just witnessed as they shuffled through the exit.
One woman, a mother who tried to stop Chapman from leaping, was particularly disturbed. She did not speak to reporters.
Chapman “looked like he was taking selfies” after dropping into the habitat, 21-year-old Scarlet Hogan told The Telegraph.
“Up until he got attacked, it was like he was in a trance, not in reality at all,” Hogan said.
“He had arms wide open ready for the tiger to attack him. It was quite bad. We were just stood there, frozen… the last thing we saw was the tiger’s jaw on his neck.”
Chapman, who had traveled from nearby Doncaster to the zoo, was an actor who had roles in productions by the BBC and ITV.
“The man who I saw on the bridge with his AirPods in, dancing, was happily enjoying seeing the tiger,” witness Marie Miller said.
Park staff said Altai, whose subspecies is critically endangered, will not be euthanized, and witnesses who spoke to the BBC said staff promptly took control and shut the park down.
Neither the zoo nor the tiger were at fault, said the University of Reading’s Campbell Murn, a former member of the UK government’s Zoo Experts Committee.
“I view it in the same way a determined thief will get into somebody’s house or somebody’s car,” Murn said, “and despite the best security systems and enclosures sometimes these things happen.”
This unhappy incident continues to get huge coverage here – it was top story on the BBC television breakfast news show at 7am this morning, taking precedence over national politics (sordid!) and international affairs (grim!) It will be interesting to see the public reaction when the Park reopens – will visitors flood back to show their support, or stay away out of respect or anxiety? And how will Altai respond when he’s finally released from his indoor quarters into the big outdoor enclosure where the incident took place?
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I think this sort of thing shocks us because it reminds us how physically vulnerable we are, plus the story and videos have been circulating heavily on social media precisely at a time when Russian bot farms have fallen silent following Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s largest data centers, so perhaps the most prolific manipulators of feed algorithms are temporarily out of the game when normally we’d be getting a torrent of misinformation and propaganda ahead of US elections.
The cascade effect has been illuminating, with the Elon Musks, Benny Johnsons and Nick Fuenteses of the world seeing their engagement and reach plummet without millions of Russian bot accounts amplifying their every utterance.
Plus, big cats are fascinating to a lot of people. I think we learned that definitively during the pandemic when Tiger King became the most heavily streamed piece of content during lockdowns.
I hope people leave Chapman’s family alone and the zoo gives Altai a break. He doesn’t need crowds gawking at him right now.
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I think it was also reported on the BBC news programme that President Trump included a link to a video of the tiger attack on Truth Social. Is that really true? I mean, we Brits are thousands of miles away and totally irrelevant to you guys! American politics is baffling, just like our own
The way the Park is designed means it would be very difficult to allow visitors in without routing them past the tiger enclosure, so it will be challenging to let Altai out into his enclosure and yet prevent masses of people gawking at him. This will all settle down in due course, but the early days could be uncomfortable for both cats and visitors.
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In the interest of research, I bravely looked through Trump’s feed. He posts more on social media than my twenty-something-year-old Kardashian-loving female cousins. Eventually in that ocean of slop I found an AI video of the same tiger the same situation, but Trump is in the enclosure and instead of the tiger mauling the president, Trump gets up and tackles the tiger.
Which was immediately followed by thousands of obsequious replies by his followers, praising his bravery and posting things like “God chooses the toughest soldiers,” which is not exactly the kind of language I’d use to describe a man who used his wealth and influence to repeatedly dodge the Vietnam draft.
So there you have it. The usual maturity we’ve come to expect from modern American politics.
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Yeah, aren’t we proud…
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Funnily enough, I wasn’t even looking for it when I stumbled on an article this afternoon saying Trump has been obsessed with wild animals attacks lately and has been posting videos to his feed.
So I guess it’s more than the AI vid I saw.
Even if he’s spending his time watching Youtube videos of bison goring people and monkey gangs terrorizing towns in Asia, you’d think someone would tell him it’s not a good look to broadcast it.
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Words fail me! Which is a good thing, because if they didn’t I’d probably get arrested for polluting the internet.
I’m so sorry my original comment encouraged you to explore the presidential feed. I imagine that afterwards you had to resort to a long lie down in a darkened room to aid your recovery, but at least your furry friend was there to support you.
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You all know my feelings on this. I haven’t changed them.
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This is very sad but the tiger did nothing wrong. Reminds me of that doc Grizzly Man. Also involved mental illness.
And that orange pos said once again HAITIANS ATE PETS. Cannot wait for this nightmare to be over.
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Did you see what he said to a protester at one of his rallies? He was speaking when there was a commotion in the crowd and the cameras showed an adult man pummeling a woman, striking her with full force blows. The cops reached them, kicked the woman in the face and grabbed her while doing nothing to the man who was hitting her.
She was wearing a “Release the Epstein Files” shirt, which could means she was a sexual abuse survivor, but that set Trump off.
So from the podium, Trump starts narrating: “A paid protester! These people are scum! Oh wow, he’s fat! That’s terrible. He’s such a fat guy! So hateful. What he doesn’t know is both his parents voted for me. He lives in his mom’s basement.”
Meanwhile the crowd starts chanting “USA! USA!” as if the president of the United States gloating over an assault, lobbing incredibly childish insults and giving a middle finger to free speech is an American value.
I’ve tried so hard to keep my mouth shut with this stuff, but this is abysmal and it’s going to take a long time to recover from this. As much as I don’t want to think negatively about an entire group of people, the level of hate and pure contempt for others from Trumpland is seriously disturbing.
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MAGAS ARE BRAINWASHED IMMORAL SCUM. This is what my new neighbor, daughter of Haitian immigrants, will say to MAGAS. She is a cop and said the pos who lives on our block and punched a gay black woman in the face better not cross her path.
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I’m glad the tiger won’t be killed; he was just acting according to his nature. I remember once my dad had a bull that was still young and relatively small—it didn’t have horns yet—and my dad was cutting grass when the bull approached him angrily. My dad tried to scare it off with a stick, but that only made the bull angrier, and it charged at him. The result was a couple of broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder, but my dad never thought we should kill the bull just because it attacked him, he told me it’s his nature, he cannot help it.
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Yes Platypus Man. Was not quick enough to change the channel. Saw video with that poor kid and that orange pos on Truth Social. I think Chapmans family responded. With a brother who has a mental illness there are no words. My brother has been lucky taking Haldol for almost 40 years.
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