Apartment resident gets jail time for having tiger

The man's tiger is at an animal sanctuary near Berlin Center, Ohio.
STAFF/WIRE REPORT
NEW YORK -- The Harlem man who pleaded guilty to illegally keeping an alligator and a tiger in his apartment while children lived there was sentenced Thursday to five months in jail.
State Supreme Court Justice Budd Goodman, who promised the man, Antoine Yates, no more than six months in jail after he pleaded guilty in July to reckless endangerment, also sentenced him to five years' probation and told him to get a job and not to keep wild animals.
Yates, 36, apologized, saying, "I never intended to hurt the public, not at all." He said he never intended to endanger the children in his home and they were never at risk.
The judge said he was disturbed by a Department of Probation presentencing report that described Yates as unremorseful, untruthful and delusional about having a special gift for handling animals.
Before the judge imposed the sentence, Assistant District Attorney Jeremy Saland said witnesses' reports and documents indicated Yates also might have kept a leopard and a panther in his home.
"There were even reports of a bear," the prosecutor said. "There's a whole slew of animals, a lineup you would expect to find on the Discovery Channel."
Children at risk
Saland has said that at various times, eight children lived in Yates' apartment with him and his 69-year-old mother, Martha Yates, in the Drew Hamilton Houses between April 1, 2002, and Jan. 31, 2003, while the animals were there. Some of the children were relatives, and some were foster children.
Saland said the children were afraid of the animals and it was a miracle none was harmed.
Yates' lawyer, Raymond Colon, said his client had never committed a crime. He also objected to Saland's listing animals Yates reportedly kept, saying someone forgot to tell him that Yates "had a yeti, a bigfoot, in the apartment."
Yates was arrested Oct. 4, 2003, in Philadelphia, where he had gone for treatment of a deep bite on his right leg, inflicted by the tiger, Ming. His mother was arrested several days later.
Ming is a 400-pound, 2-year-old orange-and-white Siberian-Bengal mix and is being kept at an animal sanctuary, Noah's Lost Ark, in Berlin Center, Ohio. The alligator is at another animal sanctuary in Indiana.
Yates, who rejected an earlier deal to plead to a misdemeanor and avoid jail, pleaded guilty to a felony July 20 in exchange for a promise of no more than six months in jail and prosecutors' dropping of the charges against his mother.
He and his mother, charged in the same 13-count indictment, had faced seven years in prison on a charge of reckless endangerment.
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