Tiger escaped from flooded Georgia zoo kills man

The dead Tiger

The tiger that escaped from a zoo after a flash flood in the Georgian capital Tbilisi over the weekend mauled a man to death on Wednesday before it was killed by police marksmen.
                                                
Scores of animals including a hippopotamus, eight lions, seven tigers, several bears and up to 20 wolves went missing from their enclosures on Sunday after heavy rain and high winds caused a river in the city to break its banks.

Many of the beasts were seen roaming the streets, but local authorities reassured frightened residents earlier this week that all had perished, been rounded up or shot.

That promise was proved dramatically empty when the white tiger pounced on a man as he entered a warehouse in the city where the beast had been hiding. He later died of his wounds.

“We entered the depot and, suddenly, a white tiger rushed out of an adjacent room and attacked one of the workers, jumping at his throat and mauling him,” a colleague of the victim, Alexander Shavbulashvili. “We broke the window of another room to flee, and the sound of breaking glass must have scared it and it ran away.”

Irakli Garibashvili, the prime minister, issued a public apology for the death, claiming he had been misled by managers at the zoo when he announced on Monday that no animals posing a threat to residents remained alive.