Bear rampage kills 1 and injures 2 near Yellowstone

COOKE CITY, Mont. — At least one bear rampaged through a heavily occupied campground Wednesday near Yellowstone National Park in the middle of the night, killing one person and injuring two others during a terrifying attack that forced people to hide in their vehicles as the victims were torn from their tents.

Authorities said three separate attacks left a male dead and a woman and another male injured at the Soda Butte campground. The woman suffered severe lacerations and crushed bones from bites on her arms, and the surviving male was bitten on his calf.

Wildlife officials did not release the names or ages of the victims but said they were in three different tents.

Don and Paige Wilhelm of Aledo, Texas, were spending the night with their two boys in the campsite next to the woman when they first heard a scream. It was coming from several sites away where, they later discovered, a boy was being attacked.

"We weren't sure what it was. We thought maybe teenagers yelling," Don Wilhelm said. They tried to go back to sleep, but 10 minutes later the bear was tearing into the tent of the woman, who they said was from Canada and about 50 years old.

"First she said, "No!' Then we heard her say, 'It's a bear! I've been attacked by a bear!' " Paige Wilhelm said. As the animal snorted and huffed outside their tent, the Wilhelms first thought they would lie on top of their children to protect them from what seemed an inevitable attack. But after the noises outside stopped, they bolted for their SUV.

Don Wilhelm aimed the headlights at the woman's campsite, "and we could see her there, kind of half in her sleeping bag. I don't remember seeing any tent," he said.

With their 9- and 12-year-old boys pleading for them to stay in the vehicle, the Wilhelms decided to drive through the Soda Butte Campground, honking their horn and yelling at other campers to alert them.

At one point they encountered a truck leaving the campground. Inside was the third victim — a teenager who apparently attempted to fight off the bear by punching it in the nose and face after it entered his family's tent and bit into his leg.

Don Wilhelm said he later returned to the Canadian woman's campsite with two other men and helped a nurse staying at the campground bandage her wounds. Wilhelm says they didn't find out a man had been killed in the attack until later Wednesday.