At the Bronx Zoo, she taunted a lion. Now she’s taunting police

In its miniature tundra in the Bronx on Friday, a lion basked in both the sunshine and his newfound fame.

“He’s an Instagram star,” said Lou Liotta, who had brought his family to the zoo from Connecticut.

A week earlier, the lion — or one of his two shaggy-maned colleagues in the zoo’s African lion exhibit — became an online sensation as videos went viral of a woman dancing mere steps from the lion, seemingly inside the exhibit.

The woman wiggled and waved in the lion’s gaze as zoo visitors videotaped the episode and promptly posted it online.

The video saturated social media and was featured by news outlets, drawing predictable measures of outrage, scorn and ridicule.

New York City police officials began a hunt for the woman, on trespassing charges.

They released a wanted poster seeking a woman “who without permission or authority did enter the giraffe and lion fenced exhibit.”

On Friday, police officials said they were still seeking the woman, whom they identified as Myah Autry, 32. She had a recent address in Brooklyn, but her whereabouts was not known.

Autry, who online also calls herself Queen Empress Myáh Lareé Israelite, did not return a phone call Friday.

Mostly lost in the hoopla was one detail: The woman was never in the lion’s space. Rather, she remained separated from it by a deep moat that serves as the exhibit’s unobtrusive barrier.

Autry seems to be relishing her newfound notoriety and fugitive status, posting more photos and videos alluding to her feline flirtation.

Shortly after her zoo visit, a photo was posted to her Instagram account of her posing alongside three members of the Police Department in Times Square.

Autry has also displayed photos on her Instagram account of celebrities posing with tigers and lions.

On Friday, she seemed to taunt police with a video of her rapping before making her account private.

In the original incident, Autry was videotaped standing in the shrubbery that partially conceals the moat, all of which is behind a 3-foot-tall picket fence.

“This action was a serious violation and unlawful trespass that could have resulted in serious injury or death,” zoo officials said in a statement, adding that Autry may have also entered the giraffe exhibit.

“Barriers and rules are in place to keep both visitors, staff and animals safe,” the statement read. “We have a zero-tolerance policy on trespass and violation of barriers.”

There was quite a buzz around the lion exhibit Friday, and no small amount of head-scratching.

“It was a hoax,” said Elizabeth Crittenden of Manhattan, a manager of opera singers. “The world thinks this woman jumped into the lion’s den because on the video, you can’t see the deep moat between them.

“So she played everybody,” Crittenden added. “It’s a half-truth, but once it goes online, it becomes a reality.”

As Patty Strong, 56, a retired teacher from Virginia, noted, reality often takes a back seat to outrage on social media.

“It’s all a perception-drama,” she said.

© 2019 New York Times News Service