50-year-old employee hospitalised after horrific tiger attack at wildlife sanctuary

The Florida man suffered his injuries at Wooten’s Airboats in the Everglades

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The victim of a tiger attack at Wooten’s Airboats in the Everglades was hospitalised with his injuries on Tuesday.

The Collier County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that attacked employee, who was not authorized to be with the animal, suffered injuries to both arms and was transported to the hospital by emergency medical services.

“Preliminary (very) info indicates a tiger in an enclosure at that location was being fed by it’s [sic] caretaker when a 50-year-old male, an employee of Wooten’s who was not authorized to be with the tiger, entered the tigers enclosure,” the sheriff’s office statement said.

The sheriff’s office wrote that it was “having a hard time comprehending this happening again,” but wanted to share the news regardless.

Wooten’s Airboats is a longstanding boat tour company located in Ochopee, Florida, an unincorporated area of Collier County. It offers various tours of Everglades National Park and operates a wildlife sanctuary that is home to multiple tigers, lions, turtles, otters, and some 100 alligators.

The tiger was not injured in the incident and was safely subdued by its caretaker.

This was not the first tiger attack in the area in recent months. Last December, a man named River Rosenquist who worked for a cleaning company at the Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens was attacked by a tiger. Sheriff’s deputies shot the tiger to free Rosenquist, and the tiger later died of its wounds.