Polar bear kills woman and baby in remote Alaska village
- A polar bear chased residents around a small Alaska town attacked and killed two people before being shot
- The fatal mauling, the first in more than 30 years in Alaska, occurred in a small community on the far western coast
A polar bear killed a young woman and her baby son in a remote area of Alaska, police said, in a rare attack by an animal battling the worst effects of human-caused climate change.
Police said the bear roamed into the tiny community of Wales on the far western coast of America’s wildest state, where it began chasing people.
It set upon 24-year-old Summer Myomick and her one-year-old son Clyde Ongtowasruk near the community’s school, state troopers said.
A local resident shot and killed the animal during the attack, but the mauling was so severe that mother and baby perished, they said of Tuesday’s tragedy.
Troopers and Fish and Game Department authorities were trying to reach the town “as weather conditions allow,” they added.
Wales, a village of about 150 people on the Bering Strait that separates the United States from Russia, is part of the Alaska Nannut Co-Management Council, a group of Indigenous communities that have traditionally hunted polar bears for subsistence.