Tiger and Alligator Shared Apartment

[Murmuring Beast 0]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York has been described as a concrete jungle, but one Harlem resident seems to have taken that literally as police were called in to remove a tiger and an alligator from his apartment.

Tipped off by phone calls from neighbors, police on Saturday found the wildlife in the apartment of 31-year-old Antoine Yates, who faces charges of reckless endangerment.

 

A police sharpshooter fired a tranquilizer dart through the window of the fifth floor apartment to subdue the tiger, which weighed up to 500 pounds (225 kg), according to an NYPD spokesman.

 

Along with the tiger, believed to be a Siberian-Bengal mix, police found a 3-foot (one-meter) alligator in the flat.

 

Yates was not on the premises when police rappelled down the side of the apartment building in their urban safari mission, but was found on Saturday night receiving treatment for animal bites at a Philadelphia hospital.

 

At the request of the NYPD, Philadelphia police were dispatched to make sure Yates did not leave the hospital until New York officers arrived to bring him back to Manhattan, a Philadelphia police spokesman said on Sunday.

 

The animals, who were moved to a New York animal shelter, will eventually be sent to a zoo in Ohio, according to Wes Artope, director of the New York City Center for Animal Care and Control.