Polar bear kills woman, boy in remote village
ANCHORAGE (AP):
A POLAR bear chased several residents around a tiny, isolated Alaska Native whaling village, killing a mother and her oneyear-old son in an extremely rare attack before another community member shot and killed the bear, authorities said.
The fatal mauling happened Tuesday in Wales, an isolated Bering Strait coastal community located on the western-most tip of the North American mainland – about 50 miles from Russia – that is no stranger to co-existing with polar bears.
Summer Myomick of Saint Michael and her son, Clyde Ongtowasruk, were killed in the attack, Alaska State Troopers said in a statement.
Like many far-flung Alaskan villages, the predominantly Inupiaq community of roughly 150 people organises patrols when the bears are expected in town, from July through early November, before the sea ice forms and bears head out on the frozen landscape to hunt seals.
That makes what happened this week almost unheard of because polar bears are normally far out on the ice in the dead of winter and not close to villages, said Geoff York, the senior director of conservation at Polar Bear International, a conversation group. The last fatal polar bear encounter in Alaska was in 1990.
“I would have been walking around the community of Wales probably without any (bear) deterrents because it’s historically the time of year that’s safe,” said York, who has decades of experience studying polar bears. “You don’t expect to run into bears because they’d be out on the sea ice hunting seals and doing their thing.”
The attack occurred near the school in Wales.
When asked to describe the mood in Wales on Wednesday, Dawn Hendrickson, the school principal, called it “traumatic”. Classes were cancelled a day after the fatal attack. “The students are with their families,” Hendrickson said. Counsellors were being made available to students.