Animals: Terror in Wildwood

Tuffy was a 300-lb. lion owned by Joseph Dobish, Wildwood, N. J. boardwalk sideshow concessionaire. Last year Business-getter Dobish worked up an act called “The Motordrome Wall of Death.” In this act, Dobish’s wife drove a racing car at breakneck speed around a steep-sided wooden bowl, with Tuffy in a sidecar beside her.

Last week Tuffy escaped; how, no one seems to know. As Thomas Saito, a 37-year-old Japanese auctioneer, was stepping into his car, Tuffy came bounding up the boardwalk, pounced, knocked Saito down, clawed his chest, dragged the inert body 150 feet to a recess under the boardwalk, where he mangled it horribly. Police searched gingerly among the pilings under the walk while members of the volunteer fire department warned people to stay indoors. When police finally sighted Tuffy, they blazed away, slightly wounded him. He disappeared again. Two hours later Patrolman John Gares sighted the lion out on a wire-enclosed pier, crept up within five feet, shot him between the eyes.

Next day Tuffy’s owner, Joseph Dobish, was held on $3,000 bail. The charge was not, curiously enough, cruelty to animals, but involuntary manslaughter.