Heartbreaking final moments of man mauled to death in British zoo: “Come here, tiger. Kill me’.

The zoo visitor who was mauled to death by a Siberian tiger had taunted the big cat to come and “kill” him, according to heartbreaking eyewitness accounts of his final moments.

Several people had noticed the man, who cops are not identifying at the request of his family, while he was walking in the Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster, England, on Saturday.

He was “pacing around with his headphones on” and “dancing” happily, witnesses said – with one even picking up a sound asking them to take a photo of himself with the Siberian Altai tiger behind him.

“Excuse me, can you take a photo of me with the tiger?” » Del Taylor was heard asking in a clip viewed more than 11 million times on X.

“One more, one more, one more!” he asked excitedly, as Taylor’s boyfriend admired the tiger lazing in the sun.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he ended the conversation – the last he had before climbing a 15-foot fence into the compound.

“He was completely alone,” Taylor told The Sun of the tragic stranger whose phone she used to take her final photos.

As the man began to climb the fence, a woman close to him tried to stop him but “wasn’t strong enough” to hold him back, Anthony Hunt told the Telegraph.

“He overpowered her and jumped,” Hunt said.

“She seemed really scared,” he said of the woman who tried to save him. “We spoke to her afterwards and she said, ‘I tried to talk him back’ but I guess she didn’t want to risk her own life either.”

The man then knelt down in front of the tiger – and began taunting it, Hunt told The Times of London.

“It looked like a spectacle. He came down where everyone could see him in the main viewing area. He was on all fours, praying and bowing to the tiger. It was as if he was waiting for the tiger,” the horrified spectator recalled.

“He had his arms wide open as if saying, ‘Come here, tiger. Kill me.”

“Then the tiger came and started attacking him. He started fighting back and screaming. It was like he was detached from reality. The last thing we saw, the tiger was on his neck.”

He then began “yelling at the tiger and waving his finger at it, shouting ‘No’,” another witness told the British media.

“The tiger grabbed him by the neck. Everything happened very quickly. The tiger’s stick came quickly and fired two shots at the ground to scare the tiger away from the man.”

Other witnesses pointed out that the man seemed confused and did not expect the big cat to actually attack.

“Honestly, I think he just wanted to play with the tiger,” Marie Miller wrote on Facebook.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene. Warning shots were not fired at Altai, who was unharmed and would not be euthanized, the wildlife park said.

After the attack, park workers installed a black screen around the tigers’ enclosure and closed the park for the rest of the weekend.

“We are working closely with the authorities to determine exactly what happened. The safety and welfare of our visitors, staff and animals remains our top priority,” Yorkshire Wildlife Park said in a statement.