BERLIN (AP)----A tiger escaped its enclosure at Cologne Zoo in western Germany on Saturday and killed a female keeper before being shot dead by the zoo's director, police said. The tiger slipped through a passage between the enclosure and a neighboring storage building, where it fatally attacked the 43-year-old keeper, said police spokesman Stefan Kirchner. "It appears the gate wasn't properly shut," Kirchner told The Associated Press. The zoo was evacuated and a SWAT   team was called in, police said.But before it arrived, the zoo's director managed to kill the tiger by climbing onto the storage building and shooting it through a skylight using a rifle. Kirchner said it was unlikely that members of the public had witnessed the incident. "This is the darkest day of my life," the zoo's director, Theo Pagel, was quoted as saying by Cologne newspaper Express. The paper said on its website that the Siberian tiger was a 4-year-old male called Tltai that came to Cologne Zoo from an animal park in England.In November it fathered three cubs with a 7-year-old Siberian tiger called Hanya, according to the zoo's website. Police said the zoo reopened after Saturday's incident, which occurred around noon.However, a planned late-night opening of the zoo has been canceled. Cologne Zoo is one of the oldest in Germany.It was founded in 1860 and houses some 10,000 animals consisting of more than 700 different species. According to the police, what was the direct reason for the incident?
The zoo keeper was a new hand. A gate was not closed appropriately. The zoo had neglected the secret passage. It was very dark when the incident happened.