Woman attacked by charging bear while fixing the lid on her hot tub
A Colorado woman said she was attacked by a charging bear on Wednesday while attempting to fix the lid on her hot tub, according to state officials. The 2 a.m. attack sent the woman to a hospital with a severe laceration and multiple scratches.
The attack occurred in New Castle, about three hours west of Denver, after the woman saw that the lid on her hot tub in her backyard was partially removed and went outside to fix it, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said in a statement. She said a bear then charged and swiped at her, "severely lacerating" her arm before she escaped into her home and called 911.
When police arrived on the scene, they saw four bears — an adult female and three cubs — near the home. Officers killed the adult in a tree near a local middle school. When Colorado Parks and Wildlife arrived on the scene at about 3 a.m., it wasn't yet clear which bear had attacked the woman, so officials decided to euthanize all of the cubs, they said.
One of the cubs was killed, but the other two were in a different part of the tree — and because there was a busy street and homes nearby, the wildlife officials said they decided to wait to euthanize the others. They later determined that only the adult female was involved and sent the two surviving cubs to a rehabilitation facility.
Officials said the four bears had been spotted in the area before the attack, but were not relocated because they had not shown any aggression toward humans. The remains of the two euthanized bears were sent to a lab for further analysis.
Though Americans are rarely killed in bear attacks, multiple attacks have been reported this year — including a New Jersey woman who was attacked while walking to check her mail, a hiker who was hurt on a mountain in Wyoming, and a soldier who was killed while training with the Army in Alaska.