A tiger handler who had acquired some of his tigers from the zoo owner known as Joe Exotic was fatally mauled on Saturday by a tiger at his family-run zoo in southeastern Oklahoma, the authorities said.
The handler, Ryan Easley, 37, was near the end of a show at the Growler Pines Tiger Preserve when a tiger that he had raised since it was a cub suddenly attacked him, according to the Choctaw County sheriff, Terry Park.
“In a split-second everything was OK, and then the tiger grabbed him and started biting him around the neck area and shoulder area,” Sheriff Park said in an interview on Monday. When Mr. Easley fell to the ground after the attack, the tiger backed away and Mr. Easley’s wife went into the cage and moved the tiger to another cage, Sheriff Park said.
Deputies and emergency medical workers responded and pronounced Mr. Easley dead at the scene, Sheriff Park said. He said he was not sure how many visitors had been watching Mr. Easley’s act at the time, but said that the Easleys’ daughter had been among those present.
The facility, in Hugo, Okla., confirmed Mr. Easley’s death in a statement on Sunday.
“This tragedy is a painful reminder of both the beauty and unpredictability of the natural world,” the statement said. “Ryan understood those risks — not out of recklessness but out of love.” The facility said that all tours had been postponed.
Sheriff Park said that Mr. Easley had acquired some of the tigers at Growler Pines — although not the one involved in the fatal mauling — from Joe Exotic, the former Oklahoma zoo owner who was the central figure in the 2020 Netflix documentary series “Tiger King.”
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, said when Joe Exotic was operating his zoo in Wynnewood, Okla., Mr. Easley also boarded his tigers there in the winter.
The zoo closed in 2020, and Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was sentenced in 2022 to 21 years in prison for a failed murder-for-hire plot targeting Carole Baskin, a self-proclaimed animal-rights activist who had criticized his zoo’s treatment of animals.
In a statement on Facebook on Monday, Joe Exotic said that he had known Mr. Easley for many years. He said Mr. Easley had built a large compound at his zoo to house his tigers during one winter “about 15 or so years ago.”
“No one can blame the tiger for what happened,” Joe Exotic wrote. “We all take risk in what we do and we don’t need further laws to ban tigers because of this because you can get killed doing just about anything.”
Mr. Easley, whose father was a zookeeper, opened Growler Pines, with his wife, Elaine, in 2021, according to a 2022 article in Oklahoma Living magazine. They offered guided tours for school groups and others of what they called “retired circus tigers.” Before opening Growler Pines, Mr. Easley ran a business called ShowMe Tigers with five tigers he had acquired from a mentor, the magazine reported.
The Easleys met while traveling with circuses across the Midwest, the magazine reported, and had always planned to retire to Hugo, which is known as “Circus City, USA,” because of its rich history as a base of operations for circuses.
Ms. Easley did not immediately respond on Monday to messages left at a number listed under her name.
In a video posted on YouTube by a visitor to Growler Pines, Mr. Easley can be seen brushing the fur on a tiger inside a large enclosure and describing how he checks the tiger’s eyes and ears and opens its mouth to inspect its teeth.
“We rely solely on training to be able to work with them safely,” he says. In the video, he also dips one of the tigers paws in face paint and makes a paw print as a souvenir for visitors.
In 2017, an undercover investigator from the Humane World for Animals, formerly called the Humane Society of the United States, spent several weeks documenting what the organization called “violent training” involving tigers at ShowMe Tigers. The animal rights organization said Mr. Easley had repeatedly used a whip on a tiger that had refused to get off a pedestal.
“Ryan Easley’s death was a sad and preventable tragedy,” Laura Hagen, the director of captive wildlife for Humane World for Animals, said in a statement. “We only hope that it serves as a reminder for operators of cruel wild animal ‘entertainment’ acts on the road or at roadside zoos across the U.S.”
In 2017, Mr. Easley told the The Baraboo News Republic, a newspaper in Baraboo, Wis., that he used the whip only to create a cracking noise as an audible queue for his tigers to begin an act.
“The cats think, ‘When I hear this sound, that means we’re going to do this,’” Mr. Easley told the newspaper. “There’s no pain associated with it.”
In its statement, Growler Pines described Mr. Easley as “a passionate advocate for wildlife conservation.”