Bear attacks Ont. woman in Montana
'Screaming was not working,' Deb Freele said on day suspected bear is caught
Last Updated: Thursday, July 29, 2010 | 10:20 PM ET
CBC News
Deb Freele, 58, of London, Ont., recovers at West Park Hospital in Cody, Wyo., after being attacked by a bear at Soda Butte Campground near Cooke City, Mont. (Scott Salisbury/Cody Enterprise/Associated Press) A London, Ont., woman is recovering in a Wyoming hospital after a near-fatal bear attack late Wednesday night at a campsite at a U.S. national forest.
Officials said Thursday they had captured the female grizzly they believe attacked Deb Freele and two men in three separate attacks. One of the men died; the other was taken to hospital and released, CBS News reported.
Freele said she was sleeping in a tent at the Soda Butte campground in Montana's Gallatin National Forest when the attack occurred.
"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.
Government agents help people evacuate a campground on Wednesday in the mountain town of Cooke City, Mont., after a bear attacked and killed one person and injured two others. (Nick Wolcott/Daily Chronicle/Associated Press) "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."
'I was really thinking I was going to die there.'—Deb Freele, bear attack victim
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, which will be killed. She was left in place overnight to attract her young, and by Thursday morning two of her year-old offspring were in adjacent traps.
Such attacks are highly unusual, according to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Warden Capt. Sam Sheppard.
Montana wildlife officials identified the man killed as Kevin Kammer, 48, of Grand Rapids, Mich. The bear pulled Kammer out his tent and dragged him more than seven metres to where his body was found, said Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Ron Aasheim.
The other victim, Ronald Singer, 21, of Alamosa, Colo., was also hospitalized in Cody, treated and released.
With files from The Associated Press
