Police kill escaped tiger at Illinois truck stop
Date: 01-Oct-02
Country: USA
A veterinarian in the central Illinois town of Bloomington unsuccessfully tried to tranquilize the 8-foot-long (2.4-metre-long) tiger four times before police killed it.
Bloomington police spokesman Duane Moss said the animal was being transported in a wooden crate on a trailer pulled by a car with Texas license plates.
The car stopped at the Travel Centers of America truck stop at about 5:30 a.m. and the tiger escaped when it was let out on a leash to get some exercise.
Police were still questioning the tiger's owner, an unidentified woman, and her son, and it was not immediately clear whether they would be detained or charged.
While the tiger was on the loose, about two dozen officers from the Bloomington police, Normal, Ill. police, McLean County Sheriff's department, Illinois State Police and Illinois Conservation Police kept it corralled against a fence that separated the truck stop from a nearby residential area.
Several attempts by the tiger's owner to retrieve the animal were unsuccessful. After a local veterinarian tried to tranquilize it for a fourth time, the animal made "aggressive" moves toward a pickup truck that had several conservation officers on top, Moss said.