'We need an ambulance bad': 911 calls, video reveal frantic response to tiger attack near Naples

The Collier County sheriff's deputy knelt over Ignacio "Nacho" Meabe Martinez as he lay on his back outside the tiger enclosure at Wooten's Everglades Airboat Tours.

Martinez, 48, of Lehigh Acres, moaned, his shirt soaked through with blood; the deputy reached her arm out and was handed a roll of blue paper towel. She started to wrap it around his mangled arms.

"What were you doing in the cage, Nacho?" the deputy asked. He could not respond.

On Friday, the Collier County Sheriff's Office released 911 calls, body camera footage and the official report from Tuesday's tiger attack at Wooten's, a long-standing tourism attraction in Ochopee, whose features include airboat tours, swamp buggy rides and an animal sanctuary that has tigers, lions, otters, and more than 100 alligators.

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A flurry of calls came into Collier emergency services starting around 4:30 p.m. on March 22.

“We need an ambulance bad. Someone just got attacked by a tiger," one employee said.

“Someone just got attacked by a tiger?” the dispatcher responded.

One employee told a responding deputy that he was feeding the tigers when the victim followed him into the outer enclosure and put his arms through the fence of the tiger's pen.

"He said the tiger grabbed both of the subject's arms with his mouth, and briefly held them, before letting go," Deputy Keith Sciog wrote in his report.

Another caller, who identified himself as a combat lifesaver in the army, told dispatch that they needed a medical helicopter. There was no vascular bleeding but both arms were damaged down to the tendon, he said.

At one point, he paused his conversation with the dispatcher to reassure Martinez as he lay on the ground.

“You’re gonna be OK," the caller said. "You’re gonna be OK buddy.”

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Sheriff's deputies were the first responders on the scene. Nearly five minutes of body camera footage shows two deputies providing first aid and attempting to calm Martinez, until an ambulance arrives and EMS takes over medical care.

“He got both arms, I wrapped it with gauze, whatever we had, the best I could," one deputy told EMS. "It’s gone to the bone.”

He also was missing the tip of his middle finger, and deputies searched for it before concluding it may still be in the tiger's cage, which was locked.

Martinez was taken to Gulf Coast Medical Center in Fort Myers. The Daily News / The News Press have asked for an update on his condition.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is investigating the incident, according to the Collier County Sheriff's Office.

The attack comes less than three months after an endangered Malayan tiger, Eko, at Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens mauled a man who stuck his hand in the cage.

River Rosenquist, a 26-year-old member of an after-hours cleaning crew made it past barriers to Eko’s cage in the Naples Zoo on Dec. 29. When Rosenquist tried to feed or pet Eko, reports say, the big cat bit his arm.

An officer shot the cat to make it let go of Rosenquist, killing it. That officer was cleared of any wrongdoing by authorities.

This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Tiger attack Florida: 911 call, body cam video released from Wooten's