SAN FRANCISCO — One of the two survivors of the San Francisco Zoo tiger attack that left a 17-year-old fatally mauled told the victim’s father that the three had yelled and waved at the animal while standing atop the railing of the tiger’s enclosure, police said in court documents filed Thursday.
Paul Dhaliwal, 19, denied throwing anything into the enclosure to antagonize the animal, according to an account contained in police investigators’ request for a search warrant in connection with the Christmas Day attack that killed Carlos Sousa Jr. of San Jose, Calif.
Police searched the 2002 BMW belonging to Dhaliwal’s 23-year-old brother, Kulbir, on Wednesday. They also reviewed the brothers’ cellphones for photos they might have taken before the tiger attacked.
Both Dhaliwal brothers were hospitalized with head wounds after the maulings.
Police Inspector Valerie Matthews said in the warrant application that Paul Dhaliwal’s blood alcohol level had been measured after the attack at 0.16 percent, twice the legal level for drunkenness.
Kulbir Dhaliwal’s blood alcohol level was 0.04 percent, and Sousa’s was 0.02 percent, Matthews said.
All three also had marijuana in their systems, Matthews said.
Kulbir Dhaliwal told police that the three had smoked marijuana and had each had “a couple shots of vodka” on Christmas Day before leaving the brothers’ home in San Jose, the affidavit said.
Sousa’s father, Carlos Sousa Sr., is quoted in the affidavit as saying he spoke by telephone with Paul Dhaliwal after the attack. Sousa Sr. declined to comment Thursday.
According to Sousa’s account to police, Dhaliwal told him that he, his brother and the younger Sousa had been “waving their hands and yelling at the tiger” just before the animal pounced up a 12 1/2-foot wall from its dry moat and attacked them.
Paul Dhaliwal “said the three of them were standing on the railing looking at the tiger,” Sousa told police.
The 3-foot-tall metal railing is a few feet from the edge of the tiger moat.
Dhaliwal told Sousa that “when they got down they heard a noise in the bushes, and the tiger was jumping out of the bushes on him (Paul Dhaliwal),” the affidavit said.
Matthews said police had found a partial shoe print on top of the railing and concluded that it matched a shoe worn by Paul Dhaliwal.
A necropsy conducted by a zoo veterinarian on the Siberian tiger after police shot it to death showed that the animal had been “very determined to get out,” Matthews said. Its claws were broken and splintered by clambering up the concrete moat wall, Matthews quoted the veterinarian as saying.
“This behavior may be consistent with a tiger that has been agitated and/or taunted,” Matthews said.
