Escaped tigers shot dead after killing keeper in China

Chinese authorities have gunned down a pair of tigers that killed their zookeeper and escaped early Tuesday, ending one of two big cat-related crises in the country.

The tigers attacked their keeper during their morning feeding on Tuesday at a tourist attraction near Nanyang City in central Henan province, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reports. The tigers then escaped into the community while the keeper was rushed to hospital, where he later died.

Authorities evacuated the area, set out tranquilizer-laced chicken meat traps and launched a major search of the area. They failed to trap the animals and ultimately shot them in separate encounters on Tuesday afternoon.

The state-run media outlets says the tigers were killed “for the sake of public safety.”

The tigers belonged to a circus but had been rented out to a tourist site “with sufficiently legal procedures,” Xinhua said.

The episode initially stoked public outcry about China’s lax laws around exotic and dangerous animals, but much of that outcry evaporated on social media after government censors stepped in.

Nevertheless, the incident was one of several big cat-related episodes in recent weeks. On Sunday, a man was killed in a separate attack after he failed to secure a tiger before entering its cage to feed it.

The country is also still waiting anxiously for authorities to find a leopard that has been on the loose for over a month in the city of Hangzhou.

The leopard was one of three that escaped from the Hangzhou Safari Park on Apr. 19, in an incident that the park reportedly tried to cover up to avoid bad publicity. Police eventually revealed the news three weeks after the initial escape.

Two of the leopards have since been recaptured.