Former child actor William Chapman died from multiple traumatic injuries after climbing into a Siberian tiger enclosure at a UK wildlife park, and his family is now pressing questions about his mental health care.
A coroner told an inquest opening that the 24-year-old climbed two fences, walked into the enclosure holding a five-year-old Siberian tiger named Altai, and suffered fatal injuries after an interaction with the animal at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in northern England.
The New York Post reported that Chapman was pronounced dead at the scene on Saturday. Provisional cause of death was listed as multiple traumatic injuries and animal interaction. The tiger was detained by park staff and will not be euthanized, park officials said.
Why he went in remains unknown.
Fellow parkgoers described behavior that did not look like panic or a stunt gone wrong in the ordinary sense. Chapman was seen pacing inside the enclosure with headphones on, happily dancing, and asking others to snap a picture with the tiger in the background.
He recorded video from inside the enclosure. One account said he told Altai to “stop being naughty.” Reports also described the tiger pouncing and dragging him toward a wooded part of the enclosure.
At the Doncaster Coroners Court opening on Thursday, the coroner laid out the core sequence in plain terms.
The coroner said:
"[Chapman] climbed two fences and entered the tiger enclosure,"
And added:
"He approached the tiger and following an interaction suffered multiple traumatic injuries."
The family did not attend the opening. The inquest was adjourned to March 18 next year.
Chapman had a diagnosis of schizophrenia, prior bouts of psychosis, and had been under the care of mental health services. Those facts matter because the coroner put the family’s concerns on the record at the first hearing.
The coroner stated:
"His family have expressed a number of concerns in relation to his contact with mental health services leading up to his death,"
The specific failures they allege were not detailed in the opening remarks. What is clear is that a young man already known to the system ended up over two fences and face-to-face with a large predator, and no public explanation yet accounts for how that risk was managed in the days and weeks before.
Relatives remembered him as “a bright, warm and engaging young man whom his family dearly loved, and William loved them back.” That description sits beside the clinical history, not in place of it.
Chapman attended the Jackie Palmer Stage School, which counts Eddie Redmayne and James Corden among its better-known alumni. In 2009 he appeared in the British two-part miniseries “May Contain Nuts,” which also featured Harry Potter actress Shirley Henderson.
In later years he worked as a trader. The public record offered in the inquest opening does not show a long trail of criminal conduct or park trespass. It shows a diagnosed serious mental illness, contact with services, and then a decision, still unexplained, to cross barriers built to keep people and a Siberian tiger apart.
Yorkshire Wildlife Park staff secured Altai after the attack. Officials confirmed the animal would not be put down. No charges or additional enforcement actions were described in the material from the inquest opening.
The court has a short list of hard questions ahead of the March hearing. What exactly did Chapman’s contact with mental health services look like in the period before Saturday? Were there warning signs, missed appointments, medication issues, or crises that should have triggered a stronger response? How did a visitor clear two fences without earlier intervention from staff or barriers that held?
Motive is the other blank. Officials have said it is not known why he entered the enclosure. Dancing, filming, and talking to the tiger will be weighed against the schizophrenia diagnosis and prior psychosis. Those facts can sit together without forcing a single tidy story before evidence is heard.
For now the provisional medical finding is straightforward: multiple traumatic injuries from the animal interaction killed him. The policy finding is not. A family already grieving is pointing at the mental health system that was supposed to be in his life. Taxpayers fund that system to reduce exactly this kind of catastrophic break with reality, not to learn about it after a tiger enclosure becomes a crime scene without a crime.
When a young man under psychiatric care ends up inside a predator’s enclosure, the first duty is truth at the inquest, and the next is real accountability for whoever signed off on his care and missed the danger in front of them.
