Tiger mauls grandmother to death at Beijing safari park

Reporting from Beijing —  Beijing Badaling Wildlife World promises visitors a safari experience just 30 miles from the center of the Chinese capital — customers can drive their own cars through a park where lions, tigers and other wild game roam free. But on Saturday afternoon, one family’s outing went horribly wrong, ending with a Siberian tiger mauling a 57-year-old grandmother to death.

The incident, caught on security camera footage aired by state-run China Central Television, is chilling: A woman can be seen on the video stepping out from the front passenger’s side of a white sedan and walking around to the driver’s side. As her husband opens his door, a tiger suddenly bounds up to the vehicle, knocking the woman to the pavement and dragging her off the roadway.

The man rushes out of the car to come to his wife’s aid, along with the woman’s mother, who had been sitting in the back seat along with the couple’s son.

Although park staff appeared on the scene almost immediately in a green SUV, a second tiger attacked the older woman, killing her on the spot, authorities said.

The younger woman, who according to local media reports is in her 30s, was taken to a hospital and was expected to survive. The park was closed pending an investigation.

Why the woman got out of the vehicle remains unclear. Park visitors are required to sign an agreement saying they will lock their doors, keep their windows up and not get out of their vehicles while driving through the 1.5-square-mile facility, which sits near the Great Wall northwest of Beijing. Loudspeakers along the driving route continually remind visitors to stay in their cars.

See the most-read stories in World News this hour »

Although some initial reports suggested the woman left the car because of an argument, later accounts quoting colleagues of the husband said the family believed they had already driven out of the wild-animal zone when the woman got out of the car.

Badaling Wildlife World’s website says visitors can “feed the beasts” and “get close to wild animals.” In one section with particularly unfortunate wording, it says: “You can get to know the process of returning animals to their wild state and feel the meaning of ‘survival of the fittest.’”

A Beijing government tourism site describes Badaling Wildlife World as the largest wildlife zoo in the country, with about 10,000 animals including bears, kangaroos, monkeys, wolves and peacocks. Admission costs about $13.50 for adults. The park is also known as Badaling Safari World.

It wasn’t the first deadly incident at the facility. In 2009, three young men who were on an outing at the Great Wall decided to take a shortcut home and hopped the park’s fence; an 18-year-old was killed by a tiger.

In a 2012 incident that echoed the events of this weekend, a female visitor got out of her car — apparently to urinate by the roadside — and was bitten by a tiger. She survived.

In 2014, a park ranger was bitten by a tiger and died. And this past spring, a park staffer who was cleaning the elephant habitat was trampled to death by one of the pachyderms.

The U.S. has at least one similar drive-through wild animal park, called Lion Country Safari, in Palm Beach County, Fla. Another branch of Lion Country Safari was located in Orange County and was open from 1970 to 1984.

Yingzhi Yang and Nicole Liu in The Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.

[email protected]

Follow me on Twitter @JulieMakLAT.

MORE WORLD NEWS

Why teachers have been occupying one of Mexico’s most alluring public spaces since May

Shooting in Munich fits a pattern that’s all too familiar — but not for Germany

Bombing at Afghanistan protest kills 81; Islamic State claims responsibility