A 24-year-old woman and her 1-year-old son were identified Wednesday as the victim of a fatal polar bear attack in an isolated Alaska Native village.
A 24-year-old woman and her 1-year-old son were identified Wednesday as the victim of a fatal polar bear attack in an isolated Alaska Native village.
Summer Myomick of Saint Michael and her son, Clyde Ongtowasruk, were killed in the attack, Alaska State Troopers said in a statement.
The attack occurred near the school in Wales.
Poor weather and a lack of runway lights at the Wales gravel air strip prevented troopers and wildlife officials from making it to Wales on Tuesday after the polar bear attack. Attempts were being made again Wednesday.
When asked to describe the mood in Wales on Wednesday, Dawn Hendrickson, the school principal, called it “traumatic.”
Classes were canceled a day after the fatal attack. “The students are with their families,” Hendrickson said. Counselors were being made available to students.
Like many far-flung Alaskan villages, the predominantly Inupiaq community of roughly 150 people organizes patrols when the bears are expected in town, from July through early November, before the sea ice forms and bears head out on the frozen landscape to hunt seals.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
A polar bear chased several residents around a tiny, isolated Alaska Native whaling village, killing two people in an extremely rare attack before another community member shot and killed the bear, authorities said
The fatal mauling of a woman and a boy happened Tuesday in Wales, an isolated Bering Strait coastal community located on the western-most tip of the North American mainland — about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Russia — that is no stranger to co-existing with polar bears.
Like many far-flung Alaskan villages, the predominantly Inupiaq community of roughly 150 people organizes patrols when the bears are expected in town, from July through early November, before the sea ice forms and bears head out on the frozen landscape to hunt seals.
That makes what happened this week almost unheard of because polar bears are normally far out on the ice in the dead of winter and not close to villages, said Geoff York, the senior director of conservation at Polar Bear International, a conversation group. The last fatal polar bear encounter in Alaska was in 1990.
