Family Asks Public to Stop Sharing Tiger Attack Video After Yorkshire Park Death
The family of William Chapman, 23, has asked the public to stop publishing and circulating footage of the tiger attack that killed him at Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster on Saturday.
In a statement released on Tuesday evening, the family said continued publication and circulation of the footage online was deeply offensive and was causing them severe distress, according to The Guardian.
Chapman died after entering a tiger enclosure at the park. His family described him as bright, warm and engaging. They said he had lived with significant mental illness for a number of years and was prescribed strong medication. The park remains closed.
The appeal followed the spread of a 41-second, silent video clip on social media. Donald Trump posted the clip to 13 million followers on Truth Social on Tuesday. The footage showed the tiger biting and clawing Chapman as he sat in the enclosure, and showed Chapman wagging his finger at the tiger. It did not show Chapman being killed.
Trump captioned the footage: “Don’t ever mess with nature! President DJT.” He later posted a second, AI-generated video of himself chasing and play-fighting with the tiger. That video was accompanied by the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight by The Tokens. It features Trump copying Chapman’s pointing gesture and ends with him and the tiger hugging.
The tiger was Altai, an Amur tiger, also known as a Siberian tiger. Yorkshire Wildlife Park said Altai will not be euthanised, meaning the tiger will not be put down. Doncaster City Council, which is responsible for licensing the park, meaning giving it legal permission to operate, said it had started a health and safety investigation. An inquest, a formal hearing to establish the facts around a death, is due to open at Doncaster coroner’s court on Thursday morning. Think of licensing as a permission slip backed by safety checks, and an inquest as a fact-finding review rather than a trial about guilt.
As a child, Chapman appeared in ITV’s 2009 comedy drama May Contain Nuts and in BBC Learning’s True Stories series. He previously attended the Jackie Palmer stage school in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.
The broader context here is the collision between private grief and public amplification. A request to withhold graphic material has little practical force once it has reached millions. The facts about entry, response and licensing will be tested in the council investigation and the coroner’s inquest, not in the circulation of clips. The circulation itself becomes a separate issue about how images travel and who chooses to extend their reach.
