CIRCUS trainer Graham Chipperfield has told of the horrifying moment he saw his brother Richard attacked by a tiger.

Richard, whose family circus is based at Chipping Norton, is recovering in hospital in the United States after his tiger Arnie, which he had known since it was a cub, bit a huge lump out of his brain the size of a cricket ball.

Graham described the terrible tragedy: "Richard had gone over to kiss his favourite tiger Arnie.

"But that morning, when I turned around, I saw Arnie had grabbed my brother and was lying on top of him, crushing Richard's head in his mouth.

"He weighed about 600 pounds, and he was just biting my brother, hanging on as he sank his fangs into him - fixing, we call it - and my brother was flailing with one arm, trying to push him off.

"I couldn't believe it. It was a terrible sight.

"I ran over and shouted 'Arnie'. I began hitting him with the only thing I had with me, a glass fibre pole, but it was designed to control him in the ring, not as a weapon. "I might as well have been tapping Arnie with a pencil. I thought Richard was dead. His eyes were open and fixed. Just lifeless. Blood was gushing from the side of his head. But I couldn't leave him there."

He went to get help and saw there was a road of blood in the cage.

"Then three other tigers began to lunge at him. Richard was down and weak and they were treating him the way they would a wounded tiger in the wild."

Graham and an assistant got Richard out of the cage, before Graham grabbed a pump-action shotgun and shot the big cat five times.

Richard has just started to walk again following the accident in January and he is able to utter four or five simple words.

He is being cared for in Florida and his parents Richard Chipperfield Senior and his wife, Janet, say he understands what is going on.

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