Colorado officers say a 74-year-old man is fortunate to be alive after being attacked by a black bear in his home Thursday evening. The sufferer, who lives in Lake Metropolis, sustained a number of accidents throughout the assault. Regardless of the extent of his wounds, officers say the person declined to be transported to the hospital and was handled on the scene.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife defined in a press launch {that a} black bear sow and three of its cubs entered the residence in Lake Metropolis round 8:30 p.m. The bears got here in by a “partially cracked sliding glass door.” The loud noise startled the residents, and the 74-year-old man charged the sow with a chair. However the sow knocked him right into a wall and clawed him repeatedly, inflicting vital wounds to his head, neck, each arms, decrease stomach, shoulder, and calf.
“It’s definitely fortunate we didn’t have a fatality, as a result of it was shut,” CPW wildlife officer Lucas Martin stated within the press launch.
Legislation enforcement officers from the Hinsdale County Sheriff’s Division responded to the scene together with emergency medical personnel. The residents had locked themselves in a bed room, and the three cubs have been nonetheless in the home. A sheriff’s deputy needed to haze the cubs out of the house.
Two CPW officers arrived on the residence quickly after, they usually discovered the sow and three cubs in a tree exterior. After confirming they have been the identical bears concerned within the assault, officers euthanized all 4 bears. The carcasses have been transported to a CPW lab for necropsies and illness testing.
The id of the relations, together with the person who was injured, stay undisclosed. HCSD had no touch upon the incident, and CPW didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. However the company described the incident as a textbook instance of what occurs when bears get too comfy round people and study to affiliate us with meals.
“Clearly, these bears have been extremely habituated and have been keen to enter an occupied home with the residents sitting simply toes away,” CPW wildlife supervisor Brandon Diamond stated. “When a bear reaches this degree of human habituation, clearly quite a lot of interplay with folks has already occurred, and until communities are working with us collaboratively and speaking points, we now have no alternative to intervene.”
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That is the primary confirmed black bear assault in Colorado in 2024, and CPW stated it has solely acquired eight experiences of bear exercise in Hinsdale County (the place Lake Metropolis is positioned) to date this yr. Regardless of that comparatively low quantity, CPW workers stated they’ve seen a number of tales on social media in latest months about black bears breaking into unoccupied houses and garages. CPW wildlife officer Lewis Martin defined that Thursday’s incident ought to function a public security reminder to report all black bear encounters, even the seemingly innocuous ones, to the company.
“Usually, folks need to get on social media and put up about it, however they by no means really name the authorities,” Martin stated. “We don’t solely need calls when one thing escalates to this degree. We wish to have the ability to do some administration earlier than issues get to this degree.”