A NYC Police Officer Comes Face-To-Face with Ming, a 350lb Tiger Secretly Living in an Apartment in Harlem

Ming, a 300-pound jungle beast, was recently buried at The Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in upstate New York.

He had spent the last 15 years at an animal sanctuary in Ohio since his rescue from the Drew Hamilton Houses in October 2003. Ming was cremated and a large urn holding his remains was interred at the cemetery on April 20.

“Legendary NYC tiger, raised in apartment 5E in the Drew Hamilton Houses at 141st and Adam Clayon Powell Jr. Blvd,” the creature’s tombstone reads under his name and the engraving “Tiger of Harlem.”

The legendary tiger, was bought by felinophile Antoine Yates when he was just eight weeks old after he was born in Racine, Minnesota.

Yates brought Ming to his five-bedroom public housing apartment in Harlem and raised him from a baby until he was a full-sized tiger who even had his own room. Ming went on to become a figurative representation of how wild the streets of New York could be,

Inevitably, Ming attacked Yates, sinking his sizable fangs into his owner’s leg and sending him to the hospital.

The NYPD quickly learned about Ming thanks to a tip from a neighbor and sent its special Emergency Services Unit to free him from the flat.

Fifteen years later, Martin Duffy still can’t wrap his head around the story of Ming. Detective Duffy: “He would literally lay right across me and wouldn’t fall asleep unless his body was sprawled across mine”.

Police had drilled holes in a wall to get a closer look at Ming through a back bedroom window. Staff member Sean Duffy tranquilized him with a dart gun before entering the apartment to release him.

Yates says he had grand plans—which are still in motion—to buy a large property for exotic animals that would also function as a conservation and teaching center for aficionados like him. He claims he never intended to keep Ming caged up in the flat.

On grainy camera footage, Cook could see Ming retreat out of sight. “You could see he was feeling the first effects,” Cook said. It took a half dozen men, or more, to hoist him into the back of a truck. “I just remember looking at the size of his head, and I remember thinking, who’s ever going to get to touch this unless you work in a zoo?” rescuer Antoine Yates says.

Antoine Yates has told some pretty tall tales about getting Ming back from Noah’s Lost Ark.

He claims to have as many as 22 lions and tigers, or that he’s raising ocelot-like wildcats called servals. There is no record of him living in Pahrump, Nevada, and he’s never visited the town. Perhaps only Ming knew the truth. RIP, Ming.