What's so frustrating is the way that it's been arbitrarily decided that the poor guy had profound autism, was deaf, was non verbal, was using Makaton based on nothing more than a visceral feeling in your water.
Plenty of people with autism are more than capable of understanding cause and effect and not to go into a big cat enclosure. In fact many are risk averse and follow rules to the letter.
I hate the way (and I have personal experience here) that autism is being used as a catch-all term and as though people with autism pose a danger to themselves and others.
I even saw one woman on Tik Tok monetising her ASD child by asking him if he'd like to go into the lion's garden in a zoo and asking him why and what he'd do there, suggesting that lions just pad about in a friendly way in their enclosure: and reinforcing the idea that autistic people have no idea how to keep themselves safe. It was staggering, way to go putting your SEN on Tik Tok and putting ideas in his head about going to cuddle the lions.
Autism is social and communication difficulties, and entirely separate from learning disabilities.
From the latest reports where more witnesses have come forward it seems the man was dancing once in the enclosure taking selfies of himself, he lay down and starting praying to the tiger before the inevitable happened. I also interpreted his hand gestures as pointing with his index finger. He also was supposedly overhead muttering religious sayings by the woman who tried to stop him.
It's wild to me how in the past 24 hours a narrative has been constructed of a giant overgrown deaf, non verbal helpless man child with a very low IQ who innocently wandered into the tiger enclosure and it's all the fault of his non existent (non white) carers. All that was needed was Mr Tumble and his spotty bag.
All based on seconds of footage, not an actual diagnosis or known facts.
Maybe he was on something. We know he could speak. Maybe he was having a psychotic break, maybe he was an idiot trying to get content. Someone who has gained a false impression of big cats and his power to control them from too many cute wild animals cuddling their owner clips.
it's the human brain rushing to make sense and order out of chaos, but maybe he was while not mentally ill or diagnosed with anything, a tragically ignorant and reckless young man?
Doesn't make his choices ok or his death any less harrowing.