Killer grizzly captured after slaying one, injuring two

Published on Thursday 29 July 2010 15:14

A MOTHER grizzly and two of her three cubs have been captured after killing one person and injuring two others during a late-night rampage through a camping ground near Yellowstone National Park in the US state of Montana.

The mother, estimated to weigh 300 to 400 pounds, was lured into a trap and the younger bears captured after they followed her.

Park Warden Sam Sheppard yesterday said he was confident they had captured the killer bear because it came back to the same site where the man was killed on Wednesday.

Sheppard described the rampage - in which campers in three different tents were mauled as they slept - as a highly unusual predatory attack.

"She basically targeted the three people and went after them," Sheppard said. "It wasn't like an archery hunter who gets between a sow and her cubs and she responds to protect them."

Officials have said the sow will be killed. State and federal wildlife officials will determine the fate of the cubs. Sheppard said they are unlikely to be returned to the wild because they could have been learning predatory behaviour from their mother.

One of the victims of the attack, Deb Freele of London, Ontario, said yesterday she was bitten on her arm and leg before she instinctively played dead so the animal would leave her alone.

Speaking from a Wyoming hospital, Freele said she woke up just before the bear bit her arm.

"I screamed, he bit harder, I screamed harder, he continued to bite," she said, adding that she could hear her bones breaking.

"I told myself, play dead," she said. "I went totally limp. As soon as I went limp, I could feel his jaws get loose and then he let me go."

Freele said the bear was silent.

"This, to me, was just an absolutely freaky thing," she said. "I have to believe that the bear was not normal. It was very quiet, it never made any noise. I felt like it was hunting me."

Freele suffered severe lacerations and crushed bones from bites on her arms. The male survivor, thought to be a teenager, suffered puncture wounds on his calf.

The fatality was named as Kevin Kammer, 48. The other male victim was not named last night.

The bear attack was the most brazen in the Yellowstone area since the 1980s, wildlife officials said. In 2008 at the same campsite, a grizzly bear bit and injured a man sleeping in a tent. A young adult female grizzly was captured in a trap four days later and taken to a bear research centre in Washington state.

The latest attack had residents and visitors to Cooke City on edge. Many were carrying bear spray, a pepper-based deterrent more commonly seen in Yellowstone's backcountry than on the streets of the national park satellite community.

"The suspicion among a lot of the residents is that the bear they caught (in 2008) was not the right one," said Gary Vincelette, who has a cabin in nearby Silver Gate.

Sheppard, the warden, said there was no truth to that.

The grizzly involved in the latest attack showed no outward signs of sickness or starvation that might have explained its unusual behaviour, said Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokes-woman Andrea Jones.

About 600 grizzly bears and hundreds of less-aggressive black bears live in the Yellowstone area. The region is pasted with hundreds of signs warning visitors to keep food out of the bears' reach.

Experts say bears who eat human food quickly become habituated to people, increasing the danger of an attack.

Yet in the case of Wednesday's attack, all the victims had put their food into metal food canisters installed at the campsite, Sheppard said. "They were doing things right," he said. "It was random. I have no idea why this bear picked these three tents out of all the tents there."

The 10-acre camping ground in Gallatin National Forest has 27 sites. Two other campsites were also closed while the attacking bear or bears remained at large.