Bear claws 19-year-old's face and chest through window of Crestline home - BERITAJA

Darah Wood was approaching her 19-year-old son’s room early Monday erstwhile he stormed retired pinch humor connected his face.

A nosebleed, she thought. But erstwhile she peeked into his room, she saw a ample achromatic carnivore trying to get successful done a window.

“The carnivore had reached successful and clawed him,” she said successful a telephone interview. “There were a fewer surface-level scratches connected his tummy and chest, but he had really gotten his face.”

She said she frightened the carnivore distant by screaming and banging a cookware pinch a woody spoon.

Paramedics arrived and took her son, Kevin, who is autistic, to Loma Linda University Medical Center — a 39-minute thrust from from their location successful Crestline, a upland organization successful San Bernardino County.

Wood said the bear’s claws had opened her son’s upper-right articulator and nostril, requiring stitches. She said his rima was swollen but that he was retired of the infirmary and recovering Wednesday.

Although carnivore attacks are rare, the incident has rattled immoderate residents successful the mini upland organization and sparked a probe by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

As portion of their investigation, wildlife officers took a postulation of imaginable DNA grounds from Kevin Wood and the residence and submitted the samples to a lab, the agency said successful a written statement.

“The DNA results person travel backmost from the lab, and CDFW wildlife officers will now beryllium attempting to seizure the offending bear,” the agency said.

Darah Wood’s mother, Deena, said things could person been worse. She said she and her family person lived astatine the Crestline location since the precocious 1970s and person ne'er knowledgeable a carnivore attack.

The Woods said bears are known to rotation into people’s backyards, often drawn by gardens and ponds, but that they typically fly astatine the show of humans.

“But this feline is simply a small different,” Deena Wood said.

She believes the carnivore that attacked her grandson whitethorn beryllium the aforesaid she saw successful a pond adjacent their location little than a week ago. She said that carnivore wasn’t easy scared.

“He conscionable sewage retired and lumbered distant existent slowly,” she said. “So he’s a small brazen, I would say.”

Wildlife experts opportunity human-bear conflicts are the consequence of group moving deeper into the wildlands, and that bears that wander into neighborhoods are often harmless and easy to frighten.

But immoderate bears, experts note, set to quality routines specified arsenic which days trashcans are put retired truthful they could find food. Others are unafraid and could termination livestock, harm spot and airs a nationalist information threat.

The Woods said they don’t wish harm connected the carnivore but they dream that wildlife officers will beryllium capable to way it down truthful that it doesn’t wounded anyone else.