Tiger mauls 25 year old man at the zoo

A man was viciously mauled by a 400-pound tiger after leaping into the animal's den at New York's Bronx Zoo yesterday afternoon in an bizarre suicide attempt. David Villalobos, 25, of Mahopac, New York, is in critical condition after being attacked by Bachuta, an 11-year-old male Amur tiger. Villalobos also had his back bitten, where a fang punctured his lung, and his body clawed, after throwing himself from a moving monorail over a protective fence into the tiger's enclosure.

Villalobos told his rescuers that he had jumped into the den on purpose because he ‘wanted to die’. A witness tweeted, 'Someone jumped the gate at the bronx zoo n got mauled by a tiger now in jacobi ER.#lmfao.' [sic]. Initial reports suggest that the man may be emotionally disturbed.

'The tiger was minding his own business,' New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne told ABC News, 'up until the man cleared two sets of fences to get into the enclosure.' But his family, who had no idea he had gone to the zoo yesterday, were perplexed as to what went wrong. 'He’s amazing and he loves everybody,' the victim's sister told The New York Daily News. 'I really don’t know what happened.'

Officials believe Villalobos was visiting the zoo by himself. He had recently posted photos of tigers on his Facebook page, including one on Thursday of a mother licking her cub.