A London, Ont., woman is recovering in a Wyoming hospital after a near-fatal bear attack late Wednesday night at an American national forest.
The bear also attacked two men at the campsite, killing one. The other was taken to hospital and released, CBS News reported.
Officials said Thursday they had captured the female grizzly they believe attacked Deb Freele and two other men in three separate attacks. One of the men died; the other was taken to hospital and released, CBS News reported.
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Fatal Attack
Government agents help Don Wilhelm pack up his campsite at the Soda Butte Campground Wednesday afternoon July 28, 2010 after they were evacuated following a fatal bear attack in the early morning hours in Cooke City, Mont. At least one bear rampaged through a heavily occupied campground Wednesday near Yellowstone National Park in the middle of the night, killing one person and injuring two others during a terrifying attack that forced people to hide in their cars as an animal tore through tents.
AP Photo/The Daily Chronicle, Nick Wolcott
AP
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Deb Freele said Thursday she was "sound asleep" in a tent at the Soda Butte campground in Montana's Gallatin National Forest when the bear attacked her.
"I was sound asleep and then, a second before the attack, something caused me to wake up for just a second," Freele said from her room at West Park Hospital in Cody, Wyo., where she was taken after the attack.
Next thing she knew, she said, the bear was chewing on her arm.
"I screamed, he bit harder," she said, her arm in a sling. "I screamed harder, he continued to bite and shake my arms and he bit my leg. After maybe three bites, four, I can't really recall, I decided that screaming was not working.
"[Then] something inside me just said 'I want to live' and I just told myself 'Play dead,'" she said. "As soon as I went limp, I could feel his jaws get loose and then he let me go and he went away."
Freele's husband, who was sleeping in another tent nearby, "did not hear a thing," Freele said.
Freele, who calls herself an experienced camper and is an avid fly fisherwoman, made a tourniquet to stop her limbs from bleeding.
"I was really thinking I was going to die there," she told CBS News. "This to me was just an absolute freaky thing."
Officials used a culvert trap to catch the grizzly, who will be killed. The fate of the cubs had yet to be determined.
Such attacks are highly unusual, according to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Warden Capt. Sam Sheppard.
Normally, female bears, or sows, attack to protect their cubs from a perceived threat, he said.
With files from The Associated Press
