The police investigation into the tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo will soon be reclassified as "inactive" after a search failed to turn up evidence that the victims taunted the animal or committed other crimes, authorities said Friday.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/19/MNKDUHQRQ.DTL&tsp=1
Note the poll results on the link.
The poll shows that the zoo's constant and loud attempt to blame the brothers and Carlos for the shortcomings of the enclosure has been successful. I'll never understand why people don't recognize smoke screens when they see them, why peope will continue to swallow every little worm the zoo dangles when so much of what the zoo has said has been proven to be lies. It is
very interesting, isn't it, that NOTHING in the car was linked to taunting? After the zoo made such a huge deal out of friends of the brothers attempting to pick up the car? After "leaking" the information that objects in the car would be linked to objects found in the enclosure? NO pictures were found on the cell phones implicating the brothers or Carlos, after all the suggestive innuendos and hints the zoo spokesman has dropped. So we are left with lots and lots of smoke, and very little fact.
But here's a fact in your linked article that the zoo hasn't been as aggressively advertising:
Police conducted the search after the case had stalled for other reasons. The Dhaliwal brothers, who talked with investigators several days after suffering head wounds in the attack, would not agree to further questioning. Also, the zoo's operations director, Jesse Vargas, blocked police from talking to zoo authorities after initial interviews, citing attorneys' advice, police said in their search warrant affidavit. Seems to me like the zoo didn't want all the facts known.
Here is a link for the search warrant and supporting affidavit by Valerie Matthews (SFPD). Affidavit is an interesting read. There were witnesses saying that many animals were taunted that day - lions (girl and guy throwing rocks
), monkeys, birds, gorillas (4 or 5 young men). One witness called in anonymously saying she was at the Tiger Exhibit and saw 3 young men with one of them leaning over the rail doing something with his hands.
Paul is 5'9; Kublir 5'7 and Carlos 6'2.
http://www.bayareanewsgroup.com/multimedia/mn/news/tiger_searchwarrant_011808.pdf
Thank you for all the links you've supplied!
I notice in the affidavit that the police, when examining the tiger enclosure, saw only a pine cone and small branch----and they couldn't verify how long they'd been in the enclosure because the zoo refused to cooperate. The zoo told officers the next day that they'd found two small stones and a washer in the enclosure also, but the same applies: no cooperation from the zoo, so the officer didn't know how long the items had been in the enclosure.
What ever the young men did, it doesn't seem to have involved throwing many items into the enclosure. Even if they threw all 5 of the items noted above, that's not much. (It's too much, you understand, but not enough to explain why Tatiana would leap the wall.)
The affidavit also does not mention the bloody sign. I am left wondering if the sign did indeed have blood smeared on it, and if it was confiscated by police. I guess since the earlier link mentioned the investigation being closed again, the sign was another puff of smoke.
