A woman was savagely mauled to death while foraging for berries, and when rescuers finally got to the gruesome scene, all that they found were her boots and a chewed bucket
A woman was horrifically mauled to death by a bear while picking berries, and the only items left at the scene were some boots and a bucket.
The incident took place on Sakhalin, Russia’s largest island, when Lyudmila Komarova was foraging. Natalya Borisovna, a friend of Lyudmila, was also at the scene and was the first to spot the brown bear.
She reportedly shouted, “Go away…” The female bear, which had a cub nearby, then savagely attacked Lyudmila. “Then there was just silence,” Natalya recalled. “Slowly, I made my way to Laguri village.”
A search was launched, but due to the bear and its cub remaining nearby to the “prey”, it had to be aborted overnight. “The animals were only 35 metres [115ft] away, making it too dangerous to proceed,” reported news outlet Tvokha.
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On Monday, the search resumed, and rescuers attempted to scare the flesh-eating mammals away from the scene. But the mother bear is said to have kept returning to the victim’s body that lay on the floor.
The bear threatened to attack the rescue team, so they were forced to intervene, leaving the cub wounded in the firefight. Tragically, when the scene was finally safe, rescuers only found Lyudmila’s boots, a broken bucket that had been used for berry picking and her backpack.
The 63-year-old had been eaten by the bear, and all that remained, with the minimal items, was her mauled corpse. Her son had been involved in the search party.
Jeremy Evans, 39, was another victim in a terrifying attack and was left holding a piece of his face after being mauled by a grizzly bear. He had been hunting in the Alberta Rockies in 2017 when he was set upon by a mother grizzly protecting her cub.
The brutal mauling ripped off the left side of his face and left deep wounds across his body, in what doctors later described as catastrophic injuries. He told The Sun: “I found a piece of flesh with a little bit of bristles on there and some soft spot which was part of my moustache.
“Then I found another larger chunk that felt like hard cartilage. This was a piece of my ear and a piece of my scalp. So I picked that up off the ground.”
Despite severe blood loss and shock, Jeremy managed to stagger through the wilderness and later drive 14 miles to reach help. He spent five weeks in hospital, undergoing five major operations and more than a dozen minor surgeries in a bid to save his life.
The psychological scars of the ordeal proved just as challenging. Jeremy later admitted he suffered from PTSD, triggered by even the smallest reminders of the attack. At times, he struggled with suicidal thoughts, but credits his young daughter as his reason to keep going.