GRIZZLY UNSTOPPABLE: CORONER.
WHITEHORSE • There was nothing a woman could have done to prevent a predatory attack by a starving grizzly bear that killed her and her 10-month-old daughter, the Yukon Coroner’s Service has concluded.
The service has released the results of its investigation into the deaths of 37-year-old Valérie Théorêt and her baby Adele Roesholt outside their cabin near Einarson Lake on Nov. 26.
Théorêt and her partner were experienced backcountry users who kept a clean camp and made sure there was nothing on the site to attract bears, said Yukon chief conservation officer Gordon Hitchcock.
“What makes this incident especially tragic is that the family took proper precautions to prevent something like this from happening,” he told a news conference Wednesday.
“To say the victims were at the wrong place at the wrong time sounds trite, but our investigation shows that more than anything else, this was an unfortunate tragedy and that little could have been done to prevent it.”
The investigation found Gjermund Roesholt — Théorêt’s partner and the baby’s father — left the cabin that morning to check one of their traplines. On his way back in the afternoon, he noticed bear tracks starting about one kilometre away from the cabin.
However, the tracks veered away from his snowmobile trail and he returned to the cabin to find it empty. He started to run a trapline nearby and about 240 metres from the cabin he heard a growl before a grizzly came out of the bush and charged at him.
He fired four shots, killing the bear, before discovering the bodies of his partner and baby daughter, the coroner’s report says.
The evidence showed the bear found the trapline near the cabin and hid behind the trees before attacking Théorêt and the baby, who was in a carrier on her mother’s back, Hitchcock said.
“The attack appeared sudden. All evidence suggests Valérie did not have time to react. This was clear evidence of predatory behaviour,” he said.
A necropsy showed the 18-year old male grizzly was too emaciated to hibernate and in pain because it had eaten a porcupine to avoid starving to death and the quills were penetrating its digestive tract.