Child at Unicamp mauled by bear cub in Angeles National Forest
By Daily Bruin Staff
July 14, 1996 9:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 14, 1996
Aggressive animal caught after officials entice it with foodBy
Matthew Scrabis
Summer Bruin Contributor
An 8-year-old boy on a week long UCLA Unicamp trip was mauled by
a bear last Wednesday.
Juan Valle was sleeping on a cot in an outdoors campground at
Camp Singing Pines in Angeles National Forest when a black bear cub
attacked him at approximately 5:30 a.m., officials said.
Valle was one of 98 campers and 50 counselors attending UCLA’s
Unicamp, an eight-day camping trip for children who come from low
income families.
The bear cub, which was about Valle’s size but heavier, rolled
Juan off of the cot and attacked him, said Showshan Yang, a
third-year pre-psychobiology student, and one of the camp
counselors present during the attack.
According to Valle, the bear "hit me in the eye and then in the
back of the head."
The attack woke up other campers and counselors who later scared
the bear off.
"I started clapping my hands," Yang told reporters. "I screamed,
‘Get out of here!’"
The bear then ran off into the woods, said Yang.
Unicamp counselors bandaged Valle’s bloody head and rushed him
to Verdugo Hills Hospital in Glendale, officials said.
He was treated for facial and head lacerations Wednesday
afternoon, said Larry Sitton, a State Department of Fish and Game
spokesman.
The boy was released in good condition the same day, according
to a nursing supervisor at the hospital.
A five-day search for the attacking animal was concluded
yesterday afternoon when Fish and Game officials tracked down the
bear, then finally shot and killed it.
It is standard Fish and Game procedure to kill aggressive
animals.
"It was a very, very aggressive bear, a very territorial bear,
which actually helped us," said David Meyers, executive director of
Unicamp. "Most bears wouldn’t stay in the same location after days
of being chased by dogs."
Meyers and other members of Unicamp aided in the search by
brining honey and frying up about 60 pounds of bacon to place in
traps.
"At a couple of points, he actually turned on the dogs that were
chasing him. The bear was a real threat to public safety," Meyers
continued.
Angeles National Forest is home to hundreds of bears, said
officials, adding that incidents involving bears and campers are
unavoidable.
"Six of these sorts of things have occurred (in Angeles National
Forest) in the last four or five years," Sitton said.
Bears usually only attack campers if they are provoked. These
incidents usually occur when campers have food and other
sweet-smelling things that a bear may mistake for food, said
officials.
However in Wednesday’s attack, there was neither food nor
anything else that would have provoked this bear, Meyers said.
Meyers stated that this sort of incident is extraordinarily
uncommon. "I am aware that there have been previous incidents with
bears, but I don’t know of any other unprovoked attacks," Meyers
said.
No other people were injured in the incident, and Meyers said
the boy is recovering well.
With reports from Bruin wire services.
