By Sean Webby, Leslie Griffy and Linda Goldston
Contra Costa Times
Copyright 2008 Contra Costa Newspapers
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SAN FRANCISCO — His friend may have been dead, his brother was bleeding and Kulbir Dhaliwal was pleading for an ambulance, some towels, a helicopter, anything.
“I don’t see anybody here. It’s been 10 minutes. Where is everybody?” he asked, his voice high and distressed, as a 911 dispatcher tried to calm him down.
“The ambulance! ... Get me some towels, man! What’s wrong with these people?” he said, trying to convince an employee at a San Francisco Zoo cafe to help, listening to sirens in the distance. “My brother’s about to die out here!”
A Siberian tiger was on the loose at the San Francisco Zoo. A series of 911 calls and emergency communications released for the first time Tuesday revealed the fear, confusion, shock and disbelief that ensued after the frantic young man reported the attack — and raised more questions about the zoo’s response.
One zoo employee’s first reaction to reports that a Siberian tiger was on the loose was: “That’s impossible.”
But the impossible happened on Christmas Day at the zoo, when a tiger escaped her grotto and attacked three men from San Jose, killing Carlos Sousa Jr., 17, and mauling his friend, Paul Dhaliwal, Kulbir’s younger brother.
Soon after Kulbir Dhaliwal’s call for help, the tiger turned on him.
The tapes could support allegations that the zoo was ill-prepared to deal with the attack and that officials wasted valuable time thinking the report was a hoax and then overstating the problem by broadcasting that four other predatory cats were wandering the darkened zoo.
“It confirms everything we’ve said 100 percent,” said Shepard Kopp, an attorney who represents the Dhaliwal brothers, who have been the center of rumors over whether they taunted the tiger.
The calls appear to show that:
Paul Dhaliwal — who was already slashed across the head and bleeding profusely — and his older brother Kulbir asked for help and towels at a zoo cafe that had just closed, but they were not allowed inside.
With the tiger on the loose, zoo employees locked down the zoo and at first would not allow police, paramedics or anyone else to enter. A 911 dispatcher in a calm tone tried to assure Kulbir Dhaliwal they were trying. “We have to make sure that the paramedics don’t get chewed on, because if the paramedics get hurt, then nobody’s going to help.”
Sousa’s mother, Marilza Sousa, said Tuesday that she hadn’t heard the 911 tapes, but when told of the contents, she said they validated what Paul Dhaliwal had told her when he called her last week.
“He said, “Marilza, I scream and scream and scream. I scream like a crazy man, but nobody comes and I don’t know what to do,’” Sousa recalled.
A quicker response could well have helped the Dhaliwal brothers, she said, but she doesn’t think it would have helped her son. When she and her husband went to the San Francisco morgue to identify their son’s remains, they were told he died almost instantly.
But Michael Cardoza, attorney for the Sousas, said he will try to determine whether their son Carlos might have lived if he had received emergency help more quickly.
Zoo spokesman Sam Singer said the tapes show the zoo responded appropriately. He said the cafe manager, who was not sure what had happened, called zoo security.
“The only thing he was responding to is that after he’d closed his business, two boys were banging on the doors to get in,” Singer said. “He did the appropriate thing, which was to call and notify zoo security.”
Singer also said the zoo “shut its gates temporarily to ensure Tatiana would not escape and get out into the streets and possibly further harm members of the public, shutting the gates to protect the public as well as police and fire.”
The chatter among the zoo and emergency officials was fast and furious: Someone or something might be bleeding. Two guys, maybe on drugs, saying something about getting attacked by an animal.
The first 911 call that night came in shortly after 5 p.m.
“He’s saying he was bitten by an animal but there’s no animals escaped so he could just be crazy ...” a zoo security guard told a dispatcher.
At 5:08 p.m., a dispatcher said: “A very agitated male is claiming he was bitten by an animal. They do not see an animal missing. He is bleeding from the head.”
“They are talking about an animal. But no animals are out. They are talking about a third person. But I don’t see anyone.”
Two minutes later, zoo officials realized it was true.
“I’ve got a tiger out,” a woman said.
“What?” a man responded.
About seven minutes passed before anyone mentioned the injured brothers seeking help at the cafe. And then, there was grim news. “I’ve got a fatality. This guy needs help.”
A minute after they realized a tiger was loose, zoo officials looked to tranquilize the “tigers” and evacuate the zoo. But some paramedics still couldn’t get inside the gates.
A minute later came the report that a zoo official had found the tiger and the Dhaliwals near the cafe. The official was trying to “calm the tiger down.”
Other security guards were walking through the zoo, telling visitors to get out of the zoo. The gates had closed at 5, but visitors had until 6 to leave.
At that point, police officers had just entered the zoo after being blocked at the entrance for 16 minutes by zoo security. And they stumbled upon the sight of a 250-pound Siberian tiger sitting next to a now-injured Kulbir.
“I have the animal,” an officer says. “It’s sitting right in front of me.” Then suddenly another officer yelled the emergency: “CODE 33! We have the tiger! Blue on blue! Blue on blue.!” — a warning that multiple officers were firing their weapons and to watch out for cross-fire. “We have the tiger attacking the victim.”
Anxious officers called out to see if they could help: “Give us the location?”
Seconds later, an officer said: “Stop shooting,” his voice lowered and sounded audibly relieved. Then came a call of “Code 4,” which meant it was all over.
“We have the cat. We shot the cat. We are tending to the victim now.”
But then came another chilling dispatch: “The first tiger has been shot. But we have another tiger outstanding.”
And for 18 minutes after the escaped tiger was killed, police and rescue crews brought in more weapons and night-vision equipment because they mistakenly thought other tigers were loose, according to the tapes.
Police declined to shed any light on the tapes. When asked whether the tapes definitively showed that officers were stopped from getting to the victims by the zoo’s security staff, Sgt. Neville Gittens replied: “You would have to talk to the zoo about that.”
MediaNews staff writers Julia Prodis Sulek and Melinda Rios contributed to this story.