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Woman survives bear mauling in her garden

A Coquitlam woman fought for her life Wednesday when a black bear attacked her in her yard and tore her scalp open.

Her screams could be heard a block away on suburban Bramble Lane, on the Westwood Plateau.

Police shot and killed the bear after it continued to behave aggressively with bystanders even after rock-throwing neighbours forced it to let the woman go. The bear shot Wednesday by RCMP officers in Coquitlam after it mauled a woman.

Amy Lo, 18, was sleeping when she heard the cries. "I looked out the window and saw a bear on top of her," Lo said.

The bear had laid open the scalp of her neighbour, 35-year-old Katy Yin. "She was covered in blood," Lo said, adding that the bear also mauled the woman's leg.

Mike Cillo, a 56-year-old cab driver who was leaving his home a block away, said the screams were "very loud. They were screams of someone fighting for her life."

Cillo and his 12-year-old son, Christian, got in their van and followed the screams.

Yin had been gardening in her front yard when the bear attacked shortly before 10 a.m., said Coquitlam RCMP Cpl. Tony Farahbakhchian.

Cillo drove up onto the woman's driveway and got out of the van. He got within three metres of the bear.

He and another neighbour starting throwing potato-sized rocks at the animal. He said it took about four hits before the bear got off the woman and ran to the side of the house, where it was distracted by a crowd forming.

"It's a good thing that it took her to the front door and not behind the bushes, because if it was behind the bushes, there's not much we can do," Cillo said.

Yin managed to get inside her home and call 911, police said. She was taken to Royal Columbian Hospital. She suffered from several bites to her body, but her injuries were not life-threatening, police said.

Blood stains remained on the sidewalk leading to the front door of the $900,000, seven-bedroom home, across the street from Bramblewood elementary school and one door away from Bramblewood Daycare.

Police fired several shots to kill the bear.

"The bear was still on scene and acting in an aggressive manner, facing police," Farahbakhchian said. "Because of the threat to the neighbours, we didn't want to run that risk. It had to be dealt with immediately."

It's not the first time Cillo has got closer than he would like to a bear in the neighbourhood. About a year ago, a bear approached a young girl, he said.

"I was going to hit the bear with the van," said Cillo, who has lived in the neighbourhood for 10 years. "Nothing happened to her, fortunately."

Another neighbour, Bill Dick, who has lived in the area since it was developed in 1991, said there has been a problem bear in the neighbourhood for some time, aggressively feeding from garbage cans.

"I saw him mauling a garbage can at 3 a.m. one night," he said. "I'm glad they got it."

Drake Stephens, Bear Aware coordinator for the City of Coquitlam, said it was rare for a black bear to attack.

"This is a very rare incident," he said. "We've never had an incident like this."

Stephens said the bear was several years old and may have been a bear known to have moved into the residential area, which borders on forest, and had been causing problems with garbage cans.

"The last five years he was afraid of people," Stephens said. But over time, "they lose their fear of people."

He said the city had been trying to start a pilot project to bear-proof garbage cans in the neighbourhood.

Tony Hamilton, a large-carnivore specialist with the B.C. Environment Ministry, said bear attacks are normally defensive in nature, but some bears can become predatory.

Since 1986, he said, the average number of grizzly bear attacks causing injuries in B.C. is 3.1 per year, while the average for black bears is 3.3. Deaths caused by bears are even more rare. Hamilton said that a grizzly bear kills a human once every three years, while the far more common black bear will cause a death every two to three years.

Bear complaints have been fluctuating over the past 15 years. Last year, there were more than 3,100 complaints around the province. Police or conservation officers killed 625 bears and moved 165. No numbers were yet available for this year.

Hamilton said Wednesday's incident should be a reminder that residents need to be vigilant, especially when it comes to keeping food away.

"Everybody needs to be bear-smart and bear-aware," he said. "One person can spoil it for everyone in the neighbourhood, and it sounds like the neighbours here weren't vigilant with their garbage. And perhaps this poor woman paid the price."

Brian - I just read an item on the net about a house 10 minutes away from where the mauling took place which had a bear break into a basement apartment today. From the report the bear apparently came out of the apartment and eventually went up a tree. It was shot with a tranquilizer dart and after it was on the ground it was shot multiple times by the local police.

One thing I can never understand is why police when they have to put an animal down never seem to use adequate firepower to do it cleanly. I had the feeling the police were probably shooting it with their handguns. Based upon limited experience on my part with handguns on small game I never found them to be satisfactory.

Jim

Here's the next story:

COQUITLAM - For the third time this week, a problem black bear has been fatally shot in a Coquitlam residential area.

RCMP and B.C. conservation officers shot and killed a 181-kilogram -- 400-pound -- bear Thursday in the back yard of a home on the 2200-block of Turnberry Lane, located next to the Westwood Plateau golf course.

Police got a call at about 7:30 a.m. that a bear had climbed through a ground-level window after ripping off the screen.

"When they tried to scare the bear off, it went back into the basement," she said. "They didn't know if there were any people in the home."

Police followed the bear inside the home, located about 100 metres from a children's playground, and chased it out into the yard, where they shot it in the shoulder. But, rather than collapsing or running away, the bear climbed a tree.

A conservation officer arrived on the scene about 15 minutes later and shot the bear with a tranquilizer dart.

The bear came down from the tree but continued to menace the officers on the scene and was shot twice more by the Mounties, police said.

The officer then delivered the fatal shot, according to ministry of environment representative Kate Thompson.

A day earlier, a few kilometres away in Coquitlam, a 35-year woman was mauled by a bear that attacked her while she was gardening in the front yard of her home in the Westwood Plateau area, which is surrounded by forest. The woman remained in stable condition in hospital.

Police said a third bear was shot last weekend after it killed a cat.

Neighbours said bears are frequent visitors to the streets around the Westwood Plateau golf course.

"I saw one here in my backyard," said Adel Kassem, who lives a few doors away from the latest bear shooting.

He said he heard five or six shots after police and a conservation officer arrived to deal with the problem bear.

"I saw the bear up the tree for half an hour," Kassem said.

He added that he usually walks his dog up a trail beside the golf course, but now will think twice. "Now I don't want to go up there."

"It's the third time I've seen a bear in the daytime," said another neighbour, Gordon Ly, who has four young children. He said he doesn't allow his kids to play outside when he isn't home.

Sharon Gignac and daughters, Vanessa, 9, and Genevieve, 10, were watching the bear up the tree from their backyard and were horrified to see it shot.

"My daughters are pretty upset," the mother said. "We just moved here [from Toronto] in July and it was the first bear we have seen."

She said the bear had tried to come up her front porch, but turned and went through her backyard and over the fence to the yard where it ended up dead.

Her neighbour, Nahid Hedayat, said she was upset to witness the bear being shot. "They shouldn't kill him," she said.

She said she recently found a bear, maybe the same one, had gone into her garage, opened her garbage can and eaten the garbage.

Might be time to teach the daughters that beef does not originate under cellophane and that when bears and people interact the bears might be hurt...just part of growing up...

My daughters have grown up with bears - not a year goes by that they don't have multiple encounters - in our own yard.

They know the rules.

If the bears show "attitude" (two have) - they die.

If they act "properly" - we all get along.

was talking about the daughters of the woman in your story...not your personally...

People just don't get it. Bears into garbage in a urban setting, have become a dangerous pest, that usually have to be killed. "They shouldn't have killed the bear" yeah sure, unless of course it was eating my daughter. Its not like there is a shortage of them.

A fed bear is a dead bear. Most people are not aware of their role in the destruction of bears. If humans allow bears to access non-natural food sources such as garbage, they help to create "problem" bears. In most cases, "problem" bears must be destroyed because they damage property and are a potential threat to human safety.


In 1999, Conservation Officers in British Columbia had to kill 1,138 black bears and 82 grizzlies because of real or perceived threats to human safety. Most of these bears came into conflict with people because they were allowed to access non-natural food sources.

You are right about that.

The biggest bear on my floor is one that the neighbors thought was "cute" when they gathered up all the dead-fall apples and then put them on their porch so they could watch it eat - while they stood a foot or two away - behing the sliding glass windows.

When the apples were gone I'm sure they would have been amazed to know how it started rummaging around my feed bins, packing off my wheat and corn.

Then it took to biting through outdoor freezers.All the while showing absolutely no fear of any person - nor dog in the neighborhood.

I have three little girls that sometimes walk a half a mile in first light down a rural road to the where the school bus stops.

The final straw came when the bear stood up against our back door and chewed on the girls riding helmets.

I had to shoot him (in spite of some saying "Odds are he wouldn't have hurt your girls" - I don't play those odds) but it was the people who fed him on their deck who were really the caused his demise.

If bear problems are "very rare" why do they have a "bear aware" co-ordinator?

Sounds like a pretty straight forward predatory attack as evidenced by it's unwillingness to leave even after being driven off. She was very fortunate.

Funny eh!

I hear your far more likely to get struck by lightning than attacked by a bear, yet I have never heard of "lightning awareness" co-ordinators. I've no doubt there out there in droves though.

Ask anyone who has hunted the East Kootenay's or Northern B.C. what they were more concerned about, Lightning or Bears, and I'm sure the answers would all bear a striking similarity. Think there's a couple puns there......grin

Anyway, the bear was just behaving naturally and the woman was encroaching on its habitat, so the attack was definately her fault..... I heard it on CBC, so it must be true.

Brian: The statistics say: "You don't bother them, they won't
bother you". (I had a lady tell me this some years back when
she was walking her 8 pound dog at night in Arizona rattlesnake
country and I mentioned what could happen to her and/or her dog).
My late dad always had this saying: "I don't want to be a statistic". I am always armed in bear country, tho, sometimes
discreetly.