William Chapman Doncaster was identified after he died at Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster on Saturday. South Yorkshire Police said he entered a tiger enclosure shortly after 13:30 BST and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police said Chapman was visiting the park on his own. Yorkshire Wildlife Park said the family had its “thoughts and heartfelt sympathies” and the park was evacuated after the incident, then remained closed while inquiries continued.
Yorkshire Wildlife Park closure
The closure leaves the park shut while South Yorkshire Police and City of Doncaster Council examine how the entry happened. City of Doncaster Council opened a health and safety investigation, adding a separate line of inquiry to the police response.
Yorkshire Wildlife Park identified the tiger as Altai, a rare Amur tiger, and said it would not be euthanised. That decision keeps the focus on the enclosure breach rather than on the animal itself.
Witnesses near Altai
An eyewitness said Chapman was wearing headphones and pacing near the enclosure before he went in. Witnesses also said some people tried unsuccessfully to distract the tiger, while other reports said he climbed down from a walkway before entering.
The different accounts leave one issue at the centre of the case: how a visitor got past the boundary in the first place. Born Free Foundation called for an “urgent review” into how the man managed to enter the enclosure and what happened next.
Dr Campbell Murn on enclosure entry
Dr Campbell Murn, a former member of the government's zoo expert committee and lecturer at the University of Reading, said: “I view it in the same way a determined thief will get into somebody's house or somebody's car and despite the best security systems and enclosures sometimes these things happen”.
For readers, the immediate consequence is simple: Yorkshire Wildlife Park stays closed while investigators work through the sequence around 13:30 BST on Saturday, and the unanswered question is still the same one authorities are examining — how William Chapman got into the enclosure.
