Colorado officials say a 74-year-old man is lucky to be alive after being attacked by a black bear in his house Thursday night. The victim, who lives in Lake City, sustained multiple injuries during the attack. Despite the extent of his wounds, officials say the man declined to be transported to the hospital and was treated at the scene.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife explained in a press release that a black bear sow and three of its cubs entered the residence in Lake City around 8:30 p.m. The bears came in through a “partially cracked sliding glass door.” The loud noise startled the residents, and the 74-year-old man charged the sow with a chair. But the sow knocked him into a wall and clawed him repeatedly, causing significant wounds to his head, neck, both arms, lower abdomen, shoulder, and calf.
“It’s certainly lucky we didn’t have a fatality, because it was close,” CPW wildlife officer Lucas Martin said in the press release.
Law enforcement officers from the Hinsdale County Sheriff’s Department responded to the scene along with emergency medical personnel. The residents had locked themselves in a bedroom, and the three cubs were still in the house. A sheriff’s deputy had to haze the cubs out of the home.
Two CPW officials arrived at the residence soon after, and they found the sow and three cubs in a tree outside. After confirming they were the same bears involved in the attack, officials euthanized all four bears. The carcasses have been transported to a CPW lab for necropsies and disease testing.
The identity of the family members, including the man who was injured, remain undisclosed. HCSD had no comment on the incident, and CPW did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the agency described the incident as a textbook example of what happens when bears get too comfortable around humans and learn to associate us with food.
“Clearly, these bears were highly habituated and were willing to enter an occupied house with the residents sitting just feet away,” CPW wildlife manager Brandon Diamond said. “When a bear reaches this level of human habituation, clearly a lot of interaction with people has already happened, and unless communities are working with us collaboratively and communicating issues, we have no opportunity to intervene.”
This is the first confirmed black bear attack in Colorado in 2024, and CPW said it has only received eight reports of bear activity in Hinsdale County (where Lake City is located) so far this year. Despite that relatively low number, CPW employees said they have seen several stories on social media in recent months about black bears breaking into unoccupied homes and garages. CPW wildlife officer Lewis Martin explained that Thursday’s incident should serve as a public safety reminder to report all black bear encounters, even the seemingly innocuous ones, to the agency.
“Often, people want to get on social media and post about it, but they never actually call the authorities,” Martin said. “We don’t only want calls when something escalates to this level. We want to be able to do some management before things get to this level.”
