Pets & Animals

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― Police on Tuesday suspended their investigation into the Christmas Day tiger attack at San Francisco Zoo that left a San Jose teenager dead.

The San Francisco Police Department released a statement that said the investigation had been put on hold "pending new witnesses being interviewed and/or new evidence being produced."

"No charges have been filed as of yet," said Sgt. Steve Mannina, who added, "the case is not closed."

Police were looking into potential criminal charges in connection with the attack, in which an escaped 250-pound Siberian tiger fatally mauled 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. and wounded his friends, brothers Paul and Kulbir Dhaliwal, after apparently climbing or leaping from its enclosure.

The tiger was subsequently shot dead by police.

"We didn't have, obviously, enough to move forward with anything," said San Francisco police Inspector Valerie Matthews, lead investigator on the case.

Police were not actively pursuing new leads but have not permanently closed the investigation in case new information arises, Matthews said. Investigators likely will meet again at the end of February to decide whether the probe should continue, she said.

Investigators have not brought prosecutors any investigation results or recommended whether charges should be filed, said Erica Terry Derryck, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office.

Zoo officials have said they believed the tiger was somehow provoked out of her enclosure, and that the victims may have taunted the animal before it escaped.

Police said in court documents that they too believed the attack was in part triggered by the victims provoking the animal. But authorities did not specify what, if any, crimes they thought had been committed.

Matthews declined to detail the nature of the potential crimes police were investigating or specifics of what investigators did find.

In a search warrant affidavit filed Jan. 17, police said the dead teen's father told them Paul Dhaliwal called him sometime after the attack. Dhaliwal told Carlos Sousa Sr. that the three friends had stood on a 3-foot-tall metal railing a few feet from the edge of the tiger grotto, according to investigators.

"When they got down they heard a noise in the bushes, and the tiger was jumping out of the bushes on him (Paul Dhaliwal)," the affidavit said.

The affidavit said all three victims of the attack had marijuana in their systems, and that toxicology results showed the blood alcohol level for Paul Dhaliwal, 19, was 0.16 twice the legal limit for driving. His 24-year-old brother and Sousa also had alcohol in their blood but within the legal limit, Matthews wrote.

Kulbir Dhaliwal told police the three had smoked pot and each had "a couple shots of vodka" before leaving San Jose for the zoo on Dec. 25, the affidavit said. Police found a small amount of marijuana in Kulbir Dhaliwal's 2002 BMW, which the victims rode to the zoo, as well as a partially filled bottle of vodka, according to court documents.

The San Francisco City Attorney's office battled the Dhaliwals' high-profile lawyers in court for much of January over whether the city had the right to examine the brothers' car and cell phones to help prepare a defense against anticipated civil lawsuits.

A judge granted the city attorney the right to investigate the phones but not the car. Details of what information the phones contained have not been released. To date, no lawsuits have been filed.

Mark Geragos, an attorney for the Dhaliwal brothers, said Tuesday he believed the city had pressured police to unnecessarily prolong their investigation as part of a "smear campaign" against his clients, who he said had done nothing wrong.

"All they were doing was delaying the inevitable," Geragos said.

A police spokesman declined to comment on whether the department had been pressured.

Michael Cardoza, a lawyer representing Carlos Sousa's parents, said that he does not understand why police would indefinitely pause the investigation instead of close it for good.

"They have had plenty of time to bring this case to an investigative conclusion," Cardoza said.

Having the case kept open has hampered his ability to obtain police reports and other evidence for the lawsuit the Sousa's expect to bring against the city and the zoo, Cardoza said.

"It makes me very suspicious," he said.

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