Houston police are actively looking for a man who they believe owns what authorities are describing as a Bengal tiger that was seen wandering in the front yard of a home in a residential neighborhood.
Houston police Commander Ron Borza said during a May 10, 2021, news conference that he couldn’t yet name the suspect in the incident because the man hasn’t yet been formally charged with a crime, but he expected the suspect will be charged with evading police. Video of Borza’s news conference can be viewed here:
HPD Commander Borza provides update on scene of where a tiger was found yesterday at Ivy Wall https://t.co/zPO6ESJ2E3
— Houston Police (@houstonpolice) May 10, 2021
The man who police believe owns the tiger is out on bond for murder charges in a November 2020 case out of Fort Bend County, Texas, Borza said.
Borza said Houston police responded to calls about a tiger in the front yard of a home on Ivy Wall Drive on May 9 at about 8 p.m. Widely seen cell phone video posted to social media shows a man pointing a gun at the tiger, but he didn’t open fire. Borza said that man was an off-duty police officer.
Apparently there’s a tiger loose on my parents’ West Houston street? pic.twitter.com/TgdIiPSPKx
— robwormald (@robwormald) May 10, 2021
Borza stated that the man who is believed to own the tiger took it inside the home, but when Houston police showed up, he put it in a white Jeep Cherokee with paper license plates and drove off. Police pursued briefly, but lost sight of the vehicle.
The city of Houston has an ordinance banning members of the public from owning wild animal considered dangerous to humans. Borza said owning a tiger violates the city code and is a misdemeanor. When the suspect is found, Borza said his bond in the murder case will be revoked.
“My main concern right now is focusing on finding him and finding the tiger,” Borza said during the news conference. “Because what I don’t want him to do is harm the tiger. We have plenty of places we can take that tiger and keep it safe and give it a home for the rest of its life.”
In 2019, Houston police found another captive tiger in an abandoned house, kept in a small confinement area. That big cat, now named Loki, was transferred to and now lives at a wild life sanctuary outside Dallas. A third captive tiger that escaped her confines in San Antonio during a storm, lives at the same sanctuary, and is now called Elsa.
According to Houston police, their animal cruelty unit is investigating the incident, along with the city animal shelter staff.
In 2015, the Smithsonian reported that there are an estimated 5,000 tigers living in captivity in the U.S. — which is more than the total number (3,200) that live in the wild. In 2018, the BBC put the number of tigers living in captivity in the U.S. higher, at 7,000. But the problem with wild cats kept in captivity is that even if they are raised by humans, genetically they are predators with predator instincts.
In some ways, the Houston case is reminiscent of the famous “Tiger King” saga. In that case, Joseph Maldonado-Passage, who goes by the moniker “Joe Exotic,” was sentenced to 22 years in prison for a failed scheme to hire a hit man to kill his nemesis, Florida big cat sanctuary owner Carole Baskin.
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