View Full Version : Tiger and crocodilian in Harlem apartment
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/US/Northeast/10/04/nyc.tiger/story.police.vid.ap.jpg
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A man who kept a 400- to 500-pound Bengal tiger and a 3-foot, 280-pound alligator as roommates in his Harlem apartment was in custody Sunday, charged with reckless endangerment, police said.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the tale began Wednesday, when police officers responded to a call of a dog bite at the 19-story public housing apartment building. They found Antoine Yates, 31, in the lobby, with injuries to his right arm and right leg that he told police had been caused by a pit bull, Kelly said.
Yates was taken to Harlem Hospital, where he was admitted for treatment.
Thursday, an anonymous caller told police that "someplace in the city, there was a large wild animal," Kelly said. "There was a large wild animal who was biting people."
The tipster called back Friday night, saying that the "wild animal" was at Yates' apartment, Kelly said.
When police returned Saturday to the apartment building to investigate, a resident told them the tenants included a tiger. Yates -- who had checked himself out of the hospital -- was nowhere to be found.
Police talked with a neighbor who said the man in the apartment owned a tiger. A fourth-floor resident complained that urine had seeped through her ceiling from Yates' apartment, Kelly said.
Still trying to determine what they were dealing with, police cut a hole in Yates' door.
"An officer who was guarding the apartment looked through the hole and indeed saw the large tiger pass by the open hole," Kelly said.
Larry Wallach, a tiger specialist from Suffolk County who assisted the police, said the orange tiger looked well-fed and in "great shape."
Wallach said he peered through the hole and saw the tiger lying by the window, and Kelly said he spied the animal contentedly licking its paws.
Police said the apartment was so cluttered they felt they had no choice but to rappel from above and shoot a tranquilizer dart from outside.
Officer Martin Duffy got the job, lowering himself from a seventh-floor apartment, armed with a tranquilizer gun and an M-4 rifle. Once at the window, he tapped on it with his shoe to get the tiger's attention.
The tiger lunged.
"I got pretty nervous, I'm not going to lie," Duffy told reporters later. "He broke the glass when he charged at me."
Duffy fired one dart into the animal and was then lowered to the ground. A second officer rappelled down the side of the building a few minutes later to ensure the animal was sedated before police entered the apartment through the door. They found the animal unconscious atop a pile of furniture.
The alligator was nearby. Both animals were taken to an animal shelter.
Yates, who surfaced later Saturday night at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, in Philadelphia, was taken into custody and charged with reckless endangerment, police said.
"This is an only-in-New-York story," Kelly said.
Police suspect Yates got the tiger when it was a cub and had lived with it for as long as two years.
Link:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/10/04/nyc.tiger/index.html
Jeff_Favelle
10-05-03, 04:40 PM
3-foot, 280 pound Alligator? That must have been one STOCKY alligator!
Yeesh! :( Tigers are NOT apartment pets! May have been well--fed, but guaranteed the poor guy is not in great shape. Probably flabby instead of well-muscled. Wonder what the fate of the poor gator will be :( Animal shelters aren't a reptiles best friend that's for sure. No doubt the Tiger will be placed somewhere acceptable.
Bryce Masuk
10-05-03, 05:37 PM
Hell at least he wasnt abusing the animals he probley took better care of them then they will get now
lilyskip
10-05-03, 07:01 PM
wow. i can't imagine people keeping tigers as pets...but then again my parents can't imagine why I'd keep snakes. i do agree with Linds, though...I would imagine that a Tiger would need lots of room to run in. I wonder what the shelter will do with them now, though...
KrokadilyanGuy3
10-05-03, 07:05 PM
Heh.. My 6'-7' gators are around 160lbs.. Thats one fat gator, and the two year old bengal at a heavy adult weight already doesnt seem logical to me.. Great story though, I wouldn't tap on an apartment window wih a tiger inside..
Hell at least he wasnt abusing the animals he probley took better care of them then they will get now
If over feeding an animal isn't abuse sure, great care.. The tiger looked great, and the gator, Im sure looked damn near like a fat snake.. Oh wait.. The care for thetiger doesn't seem right.. I'm sure the animal isnt getting proper Illumination, I wonder how the vitamins are cared for and distrubited, I'm sure the apartment isn't 10' high, I didn' think couches and tvs were proper housing furniture, The tiger wasnt secure, and are apartments in NY a minimum of 400 sq. ft? I doubt the animals were properly cared, and if the story is true, especially about te gators weight and size, Neat. Plus, how can anyone pass the smell and grunts of a tiger? Almost seems farfetched..
Xain
Max and Suma..
http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/data/503/1227suma_and_friend-med.jpg
i figure he probably took care of the tiger as a cub cause u cant sneak a full grown tiger into an apartment. and the article said the person looked through the key hole to see the tiger roaming around so the tiger was obviously familiar with its owner. i'm sure it could've been healthier in the wild but u gotta feel sorry for this guy who lost his roomates.
TheRedDragon
10-05-03, 08:18 PM
That's so insane that I find that story really hard to believe. Nonetheless, I really feel sorry for the animals. Who in their right mind would keep such large pets in an APARTMENT?????
I have 4 cats and I find it a pain to change the litterbox...wow..can you imagine the grief he would have had with the clean-up of a Bengal tiger.....also the amount of food that a 2yr old tiger would eat would be expensive...great story...the funny thing is also that the neighbors knew of the tiger...too funny
sapphire_moon
10-05-03, 09:54 PM
ya the "funny" thing is the neighbors knew of the tiger and did nothing of it.......and a 3ft gator at 200 some odd pounds....holy crap! my bp is about 3 1/2 feet, if he was 200 some odd pounds he would just be ROUND........poor animals.:(
That's just nuts. Kinda hard to believe, but hey, it's New York...
Solid Snake
10-05-03, 10:54 PM
i kinda feel bad for him that the cops took his kitty away. but it doesn't belong there.
if i lived on a farm man i would have loved a tiger.
Crazy. I've always wanted a tiger, but unless we buy the land around us it's not going to happen.
Solid Snake
10-05-03, 10:59 PM
im just glad it wasn't one of those storys that have abused animals.
is it possible for him to get the tiger back by any chance? If he moved into a house with a field.
Bryce Masuk
10-05-03, 11:27 PM
You need a licence I belive I know a Guy near me owns a tiger as well as other "exotic" animals. he used to let it lay in the sun in the field on a chain but the city put a stop to that
KrokadilyanGuy3
10-06-03, 03:45 AM
He may have a chance to get the tiger back, but its doubtful. Even if he tried, Im sure what he has already done will hold highly against him. Stately, Zoning may require you to be licensed, with one or more permits.. In New York, I hear it's easier to get off with a murder charge than getting permits for most exotics. USDA/I is required if you plan on showing, breeding or selling large cats, I believe. I don't own the cats, so I dont have the permits, I can check with my mother next time I talk to her though.. Xain
CDN-Cresties
10-06-03, 05:02 AM
That story is crazy!!! I would have loved to see more pics though!!!
-Steve-
LISA127
10-06-03, 08:03 AM
My personal opinion is just trying to keep a tiger as a pet is abusing the tiger (let alone in an apartment). Do u really think tigers would choose to be our pets? I think it is horrible, and what will happen to the tiger now? Unfortunately, he can never live in the wild, which is where he would be happiest. That is the sad part.
Its a 5 foot caiman, not a 3 foot alligator.
New York -- His obsession began innocently enough, with the puppies and broken- winged birds every little boy begs to bring home. Over the years, Antoine Yates' taste in animals grew ever more exotic, neighbors said, and his collection came to include reptiles, a monkey or two, and according to one neighbor, even a hyena.
He might have picked up his boundless affection for living creatures from his mother, Martha Yates. Over the years, she raised dozens of foster children in her five-bedroom apartment in a public housing high-rise in Harlem, according to one of her foster sons.
But when Yates' most exotic pet -- a tiger that he named Ming -- grew to more than 400 pounds and let loose a fearsome roar, that happy home disintegrated. Terrified by the beast, Martha Yates packed up the last two of her foster children and moved to a suburb of Philadelphia earlier this year, neighbors said.
Yates, increasingly hard-pressed to control the tiger, apparently decamped, too, to a nearby apartment. He continued to feed the beast by throwing raw chickens through a door opened just enough to keep a paw the size of a lunch plate from swiping through, neighbors said.
On Saturday, the police moved in, alerted by Yates' curious call, in which he claimed to have been bitten by a pit bull. They found Ming and removed the tiger from Apartment 5E after it was shot with tranquilizer darts by a sharpshooter who rappelled down the side of the apartment house. The mission created a swirl of excitement in the neighborhood and left a series of questions for an assortment of officials.
The police are trying to determine where Yates got a tiger cub and how he managed to raise it from cuddly kitten to nearly quarter-ton menace in a public housing project for several years.
Officials at the city's Administration for Children's Services said they were trying to determine whether foster children had lived in the apartment while the tiger and other dangerous animals were there. And officials of the New York City Housing Authority were trying to determine how the tiger escaped the notice of workers at the complex.
People who live in the building on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. said that the tiger had lived among them for at least three years. His presence, while strange, was widely known, and it did not really alarm anyone, they said.
Jerome Applewhite, 43, who lives on the 18th floor, first encountered Ming about three years ago, when he stopped into the apartment for a visit and saw Yates sitting with the tiger cub cradled in his arms.
"It was a house pet," Applewhite said. "To me that is cool."
City officials did not share this view.
"Tigers are dangerous animals," Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters on Sunday at a news conference. "Clearly this tiger should not have been in anyplace in New York City outside of a zoo."
Investigators from the New York City Police Department on Sunday were questioning Yates, who was placed under guard after he turned up at a Philadelphia hospital. On Wednesday, he had gone to the Harlem Hospital Center,
where he told skeptical doctors the bites on an arm and a leg were from a pit bull. He checked out early Saturday, prompting an inquiry into his whereabouts.
He has not been charged, the police said, but he may face reckless endangerment and other charges.
The tiger, along with a 5-foot-long alligator-like reptile called a caiman that was also found in the apartment, were taken to a New York animal shelter and have been sent to live in a wildlife preserve in Ohio, city officials said.
No one at the Drew-Hamilton Houses who knew Yates was sure on Sunday exactly how Yates came to have a tiger cub. But he was well known there as an outsized character who, above all else, loved animals.
"Every time I have ever seen him, he was talking about his exotic animals," said Wanda Tompkins, 26, whose family has lived in the apartment directly below Yates' for the past five years
link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/06/MN172749.DTL
Man bitten after housing tiger
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- A tiger and an alligator found in a Manhattan apartment were sent to wildlife sanctuaries in Ohio and Indiana yesterday while their owner recovered from bite wounds inflicted by the more than 400-pound cat.
Police said Antoine Yates, 31, would face reckless endangerment charges after he gets out of a hospital in Philadelphia, where he fled. He was listed in good condition.
Yates said the tiger grabbed him and "tore open my whole leg down to the bone." Yates told Philadelphia TV station KYW that he was "trying to create a Garden of Eden, something that this world lacks."
A team of animal control officers, police and Bronx Zoo workers removed the animals from Yates' fifth-floor apartment in a Harlem housing project Saturday.
Wes Artope, director of the city's animal shelters, said the tiger had been kept in the apartment since he was a 6-week-old cub. The 20-month-old tiger weighs at least 425 pounds, Artope said.
The tiger went to Noah's Lost Ark in Berlin Center, Ohio, a licensed preserve for exotic animals. The facility isn't equipped for reptiles, director Ellen Whitehouse said yesterday, so the 5-foot-long alligator went on to an Indiana sanctuary.
It will take the cat some time to adjust to seeing trees and birds, Whitehouse said, adding, "I'd love to see what the inside of the house looked like."
Link: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/142710_apttiger06.html
Jeff_Favelle
10-06-03, 11:23 AM
I'm still baffled at how a 5-foot caiman could be 280 lbs!!
You know the media, they like to blow everything out of proportion. probably take 100 pounds off both animals and be closer to the truth.
shaggybill
10-06-03, 12:38 PM
Xain, is that your tiger in that picture with the dog?
KrokadilyanGuy3
10-06-03, 04:34 PM
My personal opinion is just trying to keep a tiger as a pet is abusing the tiger (let alone in an apartment). Do u really think tigers would choose to be our pets? I think it is horrible, and what will happen to the tiger now? Unfortunately, he can never live in the wild, which is where he would be happiest. That is the sad part.
Do you think herps would choose to be our captives/pets/collections? Its no more horrible on this particular sense.. Besides according to the last few post, the animals will be just fine. Why would an animal who has never been in the wild be the most happiest when he has no idea what it's about? How do we know they enjoy, diease, parasites, unrandom feedings and so forth? The cats we have seem pretty happy to me...
Even if the caiman was only 5' 280lbs or 180lbs alike is a rather fat animal.. It'd be a bit for me to even believe it was 100 lbs at 5'
It's my mother's cat.. But yea..
Xain
No more city living for this cat.
A 325-pound tiger that grew up in Harlem arrived at his new home in a pastoral part of northeast Ohio last night, about 24 hours after police carefully removed him from a fifth-floor Manhatten apartment.
An informal network of animal rescuers found him a home in Ohio.
Lorain County animal trainer and rescuer Sam Mazzola yesterday hauled the caged tiger from New York to Berlin Center, in Mahoning County.
Mazzola said the cat will stay at Noah's Lost Ark, a sanctuary for abused or unwanted exotic animals, at least during a 30-day quarantine in which handlers will try to get him acquainted with the outdoors and with other tigers.
"We need to let it get accustomed to grass instead of four walls and glass," Mazzola said. "It's going to be quite an adjustment."
The events that eventually landed the tiger in Ohio began Friday when police in New York received a report that the tiger's owner, Antoine Yates, 31, had been bitten by a dog. Anonymous callers later said Yates had been attacked by a large wild animal.
Police rappelled down the outside of the apartment building, broke a window and shot the tiger with two darts that knocked him out. They cut a hole in the apartment's door and inserted a camera that tracked the tiger's movements until he passed out, Mazzola said.
Once inside, police also discovered a 5-foot long alligator. The alligator also came to Ohio with Mazzola and will temporarily stay at Mazzola's World Animal Studios in Columbia Township.
Both gator and tiger appeared to be in good health, said Larry Wallach of New York, an officer of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Wallach called Mazzola for help in finding homes for the animals.
Wallach and Mazzola praised police for taking the time to capture the animals rather than killing them.
Wallach estimated that the tiger - apparently a Siberian-Bengal mix - weighs 325 pounds. He said the tiger was de-clawed but dangerous.
"When the tiger growls and slams its head and paws against the cage, that's a bad thing," Wallach said.
Mazzola said the alligator will eventually go to a friend in Indiana who already takes care of several alligators.
People might get a chance to see the famous city-raised tiger when World Animal Studios sets up a mini-zoo in the Midway Mall in Elyria this winter, Mazzola said. That will depend on how quickly the tiger adjusts to his new life.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
LISA127
10-06-03, 07:01 PM
Originally posted by KrokadilyanGuy3
Do you think herps would choose to be our captives/pets/collections? Its no more horrible on this particular sense.. Besides according to the last few post, the animals will be just fine. Why would an animal who has never been in the wild be the most happiest when he has no idea what it's about? How do we know they enjoy, diease, parasites, unrandom feedings and so forth? The cats we have seem pretty happy to me...
Even if the caiman was only 5' 280lbs or 180lbs alike is a rather fat animal.. It'd be a bit for me to even believe it was 100 lbs at 5'
It's my mother's cat.. But yea..
Xain
There's a big difference between keeping a tiger as a pet, and keeping a leopard gecko, ball python, or corn snake for a pet. Enough said.
I don't see the difference, other then space requirements.
KrokadilyanGuy3
10-06-03, 10:31 PM
I agree with Lisa, please elaborate the big difference, other than space requirements..
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