The person who was killed on Christmas Day by a Siberian tiger named Tatiana at the San Francisco Zoo was an as-yet unidentified 17-year-old boy from San Jose. Tatiana was killed by police while mauling one of the victims in the Terrace Cafe, which is located 300 yards from the tiger enclosures. The Terrace Cafe is familiar to anyone who has taken their children for rides on the Little Puffer Steam Train just a few yards away.

Lora LaMarca, a zoo spokeswoman, said this morning that officials still have no idea how the animal escaped from its grotto, which is surrounded by a 15-foot-wide moat and a 20-foot high wall. Police on Tuesday night refused to rule out the possibility of carelessness or criminal activity, and zoo officials said the tiger did not escape through the grotto’s only door.

A wild animal cannot be blamed for acting according to nature. Like other recent incidents of captured animals harming or killing humans in zoo environments, this latest tragedy raises serious questions about the uneasy boundaries we set up between man and nature when we bring wild animals into an urban environment for observation by humans.

update: The deceased was identified today as Carlos Sousa, Jr