Singer treated, released

YELLOWSTONE — Alamosa resident Ron Singer, 21, is one of this week’s survivors of a grizzly bear attack in a campground near Yellowstone National Park.

Singer and his girlfriend were on vacation this week in the Yellowstone National Park area when he was attacked by a female grizzly that was later captured, in addition to some of her cubs.

The attacks began early Wednesday morning, about 2 a.m., and involved several victims.

Fortunately, Singer did not suffer extensive wounds, so he was able to receive treatment and continue his vacation.

“He’s fine,” his father Mike Singer said. He said his son suffered puncture wounds from the bear attack but was released from the hospital. Ron Singer was transported to a hospital in Cody, Wyo., treated and released.

When contacted Thursday evening, Ron and his girlfriend were waiting for Old Faithful to erupt in Yellowstone.

Ron Singer is expected to share more of the adventure during an interview today (Friday.)

Singer’s mother Luron Singer told The Denver Post that when her son, a former high school wrestler, felt the bear biting his leg, he started punching it. His girlfriend screamed, and the bear ran away. Ron’s mother said he was fine and was continuing his vacation.

“He went fishing today,” she told the Post.

A vacationer from Michigan was not as fortunate. A bear pulled Kevin Kammer, 48, of Grand Rapids, Mich., out of his tent and dragged him 25 feet where his body was found, according to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Ron Aasheim.

Another victim, Deb Freele of London, Ontario, only escaped death by ultimately playing dead.

“Something woke me up, and a split second later, I felt teeth grinding into my arm,” Freele 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 - it’s kind of like somebody else was screaming,” she told The Associated Press. “And then it bit me harder, and more. It got very aggressive and started to shake me.”

She kept screaming but then 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, got very quiet, didn’t make a sound. And a few seconds later, the bear dropped me and walked away,” she said.

Freele is scheduled to have surgery Friday for bite wounds and a broken bone in her arm, said West Park Hospital spokesman Joel Hunt.

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 Kammer’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 nearby 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 Thursday evening because it could not be allowed to stay in the wild.

Wildlife officials were testing the DNA of the mother bear to confirm it was the same animal that attacked Singer and Freele and Kammer.

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 as they slept.

“She basically targeted the three people and went after them,” Sheppard said. “It wasn’t like an archery hunter who gets between a sow and her cubs and she responds to protect them.”

Wildlife officials said tent or sleeping bag fibers were in the captured bears’ droppings, and that a tooth fragment found in a tent appears to match a chipped tooth on the sow.

Officials 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.

The bear attack was the most brazen in the Yellowstone area since the 1980s, officials said.

About 600 grizzly bears and hundreds of less-aggressive black bears live in the Yellowstone area.

The region is pasted with hundreds of signs warning visitors to keep food out of the bruins’ reach. Experts say bears that eat human food quickly become habituated to people, increasing the danger of an attack.

Yet in the case of Wednesday’s attack, all the victims had put their food into metal food canisters installed at campsites, Sheppard said.

“They were doing things right,” he said. “It was random. I have no idea why this bear picked these three tents out of all the tents there.”