Woman Charged for Taunting Tiger by Sticking Her Hand Out at New Jersey Zoo

Prosecutors charged a 24-year-old New Jersey woman with defiant trespass after she stuck her arm inside a tiger enclosure at the Cohanzick Zoo in Bridgeton. Zyair Dennis was given two citations and faces a potential jail term of 30 days and a $500 fine. Police Chief Michael Gaimari said the incident was caught on video, and they saw photos of her attempting to entice a giant Bengal tiger by using hand gestures through the fencing. 

Images show the animal walking toward the woman and swiping at her hand, which she manages to pull away just in time. She then calmly walked away, and officials later said she did the same thing at the bear enclosure on the same day. A spokesperson for the zoo said it was “evaluating measures related to the safety of our animals and visitors.”

Experts say Dennis took an enormous risk as animals in zoos and other attractions have been known to attack staff and visitors and even kill them. A zookeeper in Britain, for instance, died when a Malayan male attacked her while she was cleaning his enclosure. Rosa King suffered severe injuries in the attack, including a severed spinal cord and deep lacerations across her body. She was found by a visitor the same morning. 

In a particularly gruesome example, Dawn Brancheau died when an Orca whale grabbed her hair and pulled her underwater at an Orlando attraction, ferociously shaking her. She suffered severe head, neck, and torso trauma, and her scalp was “forcibly torn from her head.”  

In Chile, a 21-year-old woman was mauled to death by a tiger in 2021 while cleaning at a safari park. Media reports stated that Catalina Torres Ibarra was not warned that the animal’s cage door was open when she entered the enclosure. 

Incidents involving visitors include a woman who jumped into a polar bear enclosure in Berlin Zoo and sustained severe bite wounds to her arms and legs. Similarly, a man in Switzerland scaled a 20-foot-high wall in Berne Bear Park and found himself facing an enormous beast who plunged directly at him. Staff had called the police, who arrived just in time and shot the hear in the chest.