Grizzly bear ID'd as campground killer is caught; cub still at large

COOKE CITY, Mont. — One survivor of a deadly grizzly- bear attack said Thursday she realized her only hope was to play dead after feeling the bear's jaw clamp onto her arm.

Wildlife officials were testing the DNA of a bear captured at the site of the early Wednesday mauling to confirm it was the animal that also killed a Michigan man and hurt another camper near Yellowstone National Park, but they said they were confident they had caught the right animals.

"Something woke me up, and a split second later, I felt teeth grinding into my arm," Deb Freele, of London, Ontario, said from a Wyoming hospital. "I realized, at that split second, I was being attacked by a bear, but I couldn't see it.

"It was behind me and I screamed. I couldn't help it," she said. "And then it bit me harder, and more. It got very aggressive and started to shake me."

She kept screaming but realized that if she didn't do something, she was going to die.

"I decided at that point, the only other thing I knew to do was to play dead, and I just went totally limp. ... And a few seconds later, the bear dropped me and walked away," she said.

The bear believed to be responsible for the rampage at the Soda Butte campground was lured into a trap fashioned from culvert pipe and pieces of the dead man's tent. Wildlife officials left the 300- to 400-pound sow in place overnight to attract her young, and by Thursday morning two of her year-old offspring were in adjacent traps.

The third could be heard through much of the day, calling out to its mother and eliciting heavy groans from the sow, which periodically rattled its steel cage.

By late afternoon, the cub could no longer be heard. Wildlife officials said it likely had sought cover as the day warmed up, and they hoped it would return later because it could not be allowed to stay in the wild.

"Eventually he'll get hungry and he'll come back," said Fish Wildlife and Parks spokeswoman Andrea Jones.

Montana wildlife officials identified the man killed as Kevin Kammer, 48, of Grand Rapids, Mich. The bear pulled Kammer out of his tent and dragged him 25 feet to where his body was found, said Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Ron Aasheim.

Freele and the other victim, Ronald Singer, 21, of Alamosa, Colo., were hospitalized in Cody, Wyo. Singer was treated and released, and Freele was scheduled to have surgery Friday for bite wounds and a broken bone in her arm, said West Park Hospital spokesman Joel Hunt.

Singer's mother, Luron Singer, told The Denver Post that her son, a former high-school wrestler, had been camping with his girlfriend.

When he felt the bear biting his leg, he started punching the animal, she said. His girlfriend screamed, and the bear ran away.

"He is doing fine," Luron Singer said. "He went fishing today."

News of the maulings set residents and tourists on edge in Cooke City, a Yellowstone gateway community tucked into the picturesque Absaroka Mountains. Many were carrying bear spray, a pepper-based deterrent more commonly seen in Yellowstone's backcountry than on the city's streets.

Fish, Wildlife and Parks Warden Capt. Sam Sheppard said he was confident the killer bear was the one they had captured because it came back to the site of the rampage.

Sheppard said it was a highly unusual predatory attack, with campers in three different tents mauled.

Officials have said the bear will be killed if DNA evidence confirms it was the same one that attacked the victims. Aasheim said the test results were expected by Friday.

State and federal wildlife officials will determine the fate of the cubs, which are feared to have learned predatory behavior from their mother.

Neary reported from Cheyenne, Wyo. Associated Press writers Amy Beth Hanson and Matt Volz in Helena, and Mike Householder in Detroit contributed to this report.