Black bear fatally mauls boy, 11, in Utah

By Paul Foy, Associated Press
11:50 AM PDT, June 19, 2007

A black bear that snatched an 11-year-old boy left such a straight cut in the nylon tent his family thought he had been abducted at knifepoint.

"Something's dragging me!" the boy screamed as he was pulled by his sleeping bag from the tent during a Father's Day outing in the Utah mountains, his father told a campground host.

The boy was found mauled to death about 400 yards away, hours later in the pitch darkness of a spruce forest dwarfed by 11,749-foot Mt. Timpanogos, the second-highest peak in the Wasatch Range.

The boy, his mother, stepfather and a 6-year-old brother were sleeping in a divided tent Sunday night at the head of American Fork Canyon, about 30 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.

Without a flashlight and wearing flip-flops, the stepfather gave up a search and left the primitive tent site off a dirt road to drive to a campground a mile away.

"He was pounding on my trailer door. He said somebody cut his tent and took his son," said John Sheely, host of the Timpooneke campground on national forest land. Sheely drove 10 miles down American Fork canyon to alert authorities by pay phone.

When sheriff's deputies arrived, they too thought they were dealing with a kidnapping. That changed when a dog followed a trail of sleeping bag scraps and clothing and found the boy's severely mauled body.

"The mother was broken up in tears and hanging onto to the other boy," Sheely said.

Forest Service officials said it was the same 300-pound black bear that harassed another group of campers in the same spot earlier Sunday.

Kurt Francom said his son, Jake, was kicked in the head through a tent wall by a bear that clamped his jaws on a pillow and carried it off.

"It could have been my boy," said Francom, a school custodian.

The male bear was shot dead after a chase by bloodhounds that lasted nearly 10 hours Monday, and wildlife officials said DNA tests confirmed it was responsible for the fatal mauling.

"This bear did not want to 'tree.' He just wanted to fight," said Ray Banks, a 44-year-old houndsman and body-shop owner from Spanish Fork who got a glimpse of the bear in heavy cover. "We don't want a bear like this running around in the woods."

The bear "didn't want to go easy," said Luke Osborn, a wildlife specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who fired the fatal shot hours after the bear had been wounded in a leg. "The dogs got him bayed up, and I just snuck in on him and got off a shot."

Authorities said the boy's death was Utah's first fatal attack on a human by a black bear. They didn't know if the boy's family had left food out and didn't release the boy's name or identify his family.

"Truly a tragic event," said Jim Karpowitz, director of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. "Events of this type are extremely rare in Utah."

Biologists said Utah's black bear population, believed to number less than 4,000, was distressed by hot and dry weather that made berries and other food scarce.

In May, officials reported black bears in Provo Canyon and Park City, including one that ripped through a screen door at a cabin where residents had burned food and opened windows.

Officers killed that bear because it showed no fear when biologists tried to scare it away with firecrackers, the wildlife agency said.

In July 2006, a black bear bit the arm of a 14-year-old Boy Scout while he slept in a tent, also in Utah County. The female bear returned to the campground and was killed.

Black bears, which are found in 27 states, are "generally less aggressive than other bears and don't prey on humans," said Stewart Breck, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Fort Collins, Colo.