Police and officers from the Emergency Situations Ministry on Sunday caught a tiger that had been “freely strolling” along a highway in the Voronezh region of western Russia, after apparently escaping from a truck that was transporting it, the ministry said in a statement.
Emergency services in Voronezh received a series of calls earlier Sunday from local residents, reporting a tiger walking around the highway, the statement said.
“The information was confirmed,” the statement by the Voronezh branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said. “A striped predator was indeed freely strolling near a garage co-op near the Voronezh ring road.”
“Particular concerns were prompted by the fact that the place where the predator was spotted is near a newly built residential district, which is home to many small children,” the statement said.
Police cordoned off the area, and a veterinarian from Voronezh zoo shot the tiger with a tranquilizer gun, the statement said.
“It took four shots and an additional injections of a sedative” to subdue the animal, which was then tied up with a rope, loaded on a truck and taken to a “temporary home in a comfortable enclosure in Voronezh Zoo,” the ministry said.
Investigators believe that the tiger had escaped from a truck that was carrying it along the highway in Voronezh, the ministry said.
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