Bear kill two person in Russia, one eaten alive

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'Mum, the bear is eating me!': Frantic final phone calls of woman, 19, eaten alive by brown bear and its three cubs

A distraught mother listened on a mobile phone as her teenage daughter was eaten alive by a brown bear and its three cubs.

She screamed: 'Mum, the bear is eating me! Mum, it’s such agony. Mum, help!'

Her mother Tatiana said that at first she thought she was joking.

'But then I heard the real horror and pain in Olga’s voice, and the sounds of a bear growling and chewing,' she added. 'I could have died then and there from shock.'

Unknown to Tatiana, the bear had already killed her husband Igor Tsyganenkov - Olga’s stepfather - by overpowering him, breaking his neck and smashing his skull.

Olga, a trainee psychologist, saw the *attack on her stepfather in tall grass and reeds by a river in Russia and fled for 70 yards before the mother bear grabbed her leg.

As the creature toyed with her, she managed to call Tatiana several times during the prolonged attack.Tatiana rang her husband - not knowing he was *already dead - but got no answer.

She alerted the police and relatives in the village of Termalniy, near Petropavlovsk Kamchatskiy, in the extreme east of Siberia.

She begged them to rush to the river where the pair had gone to retrieve a fishing rod that Igor had left.

In a second call, a weak Olga gasped: 'Mum, the bears are back. She came back and brought her three babies. They’re... eating me.'
Killed: Olga Moskalyova (right) and her stepfather Igor Tsyganenkov (left) were both eaten alive by bears

Killed: Olga Moskalyova (right) and her stepfather Igor Tsyganenkov (left) were both eaten alive by bears
Put down: Six hunters were sent in by the emergency services to kill the mother bear and her three cubs (stock image)

Put down: Six hunters were sent in by the emergency services to kill the mother bear and her three cubs (stock image)

Finally, in her last call - almost an hour after the first - Olga sensed she was on the verge of death.

With the bears having apparently left her to die, she said: 'Mum, it’s not hurting any more. I don’t feel the pain. Forgive me for everything, I love you so much.'
'Mum, it’s not hurting any more. I don’t feel the pain. Forgive me for everything, I love you so much.'
- Olga Moskalyova

The call cut off and that was the last Tatiana heard from her *daughter.

Half an hour later, Igor’s brother Andrei arrived with police to find the mother bear still devouring his body. Badly mauled Olga was also dead.

Six hunters were sent in by the emergency services to kill the mother bear and her three cubs.

The double killing is the latest in a spate of bear attacks across *Russia, as the hungry animals seek food in areas where people have *encroached and settled on their former habitat.

A weeping Tatiana said that Olga had everything to look forward to, and was happy with her life and boyfriend Stepan.

'My daughter was such fun. She was so cheerful, friendly, and warm,' said Tatiana.

'She had graduated from music school, and just days before the bear attack she got her driving *licence.'

Her husband and daughter are due to be buried today.

 

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Eton pupil killed by polar bear: 17-year-old boy on £4,000 adventure trip is mauled to death as he sleeps in Arctic tent

An Eton schoolboy sleeping in a tent was mauled to death by a polar bear yesterday.
Horatio Chapple, 17, was on a £4,000 adventure holiday on a remote glacier near the Arctic Circle.

He suffered terrible injuries to the head and upper body in the early-morning attack.

Four other members of the party were badly hurt as the animal rampaged around the campsite hunting for food. It was eventually shot dead.

A trip-wire system which triggers a charge to scare away polar bears failed to activate, the father of one of the survivors said.

Terry Flinders, from Jersey, said the bear burst into the tent where his 16-year-old son Patrick lay, killing Horatio next to him. He said Patrick punched the polar bear on the nose in a desperate attempt to save his life. He escaped with head and arm injuries.

Two trip leaders, Michael Reid and Andrew Ruck, who are in their late twenties and Scott Smith, 17, also suffered head injuries.

They were undergoing surgery last night.
As the party came under attack, they made a frantic call for help using a satellite phone and scrambled helicopters to the glacier, which has no road access during the summer.

Svalbard’s vice-governor, Lars Erik Alfheim, said: ‘After we got the call we sent helicopters as fast as we could. When we got there we found serious injuries.’

The victims were part of a part of 80-strong group of mainly 16-to-23-year-olds on a five-week British Schools Exploring Society (BSES) trip. They were camping in the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.


Battle with the bear: An aerial view of the camp shows the four tents with the dead polar bear in the middle of the site having been killed by the group during the struggle

Battle with the bear: An aerial view of the camp shows the four tents with the dead polar bear in the middle of the site having been killed by the group during the struggle

Horatio Chapple, from Salisbury, Wiltshire, who had just finished his penultimate year at Eton, had hoped to study medicine at university.

His grandfather was the former head of the British Army.

Field Marshal Sir John Lyon Chapple, GCB, CBE served as Chief of the General Staff from 1989 to 1992 and was Governor of Gibraltar from 1993 to 1995.

He is the president of BSES and went on one of its expeditions in the 1950s.

Horatio’s family were too upset to speak last night. His economics teacher Geoff Riley posted on Twitter: ‘My thoughts and prayers are with the family & friends of Horatio Chapple (from Eton) who has died in the polar bear incident in North Norway.’

BSES chairman Edward Watson said Horatio was a ‘fine young man’ and added: ‘By all accounts he would have made an excellent doctor.’ Horatio had left base camp with a sub-group of 13 to camp on the Von Postbreen glacier which is heavily populated with polar bears and where there have been a number of previous attacks.


Terry Flinders said he nearly fainted after learning about the attack on TV yesterday morning.
‘I phoned up the BSES and said, “Do you have any information?” The man said, “Yes we do, I’ll pass you on to the manager” – and I thought, “Oh, that’s not good”.

‘He says, “I’m sorry Mr Flinders I’ve got to tell you this”, and I said, “Look, just don’t tell me it’s him that’s dead”.

‘He went, “No, it’s not. Patrick’s in hospital in Norway with head injuries and arm injuries but it’s not life threatening”.’ Mr Flinders said his son was one of three boys in the tent. From accounts of survivors, he thought the bear had chosen Horatio simply because he was the nearest.

‘Patrick was the chubbiest one – he probably had more meat on him, bless him.
YOUNGSTERS' CHANCE TO EXPLORE THE WILDERNESS

The British Schools Exploring Society has been taking young people to far-flung places for nearly 80 years.

The Arctic exploration, costing up to £4,000 excluding flights, is a source of particular pride because the society was founded in 1932 by a survivor of Captain Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition, George Murray Levick.

He started the Public Schools Exploring Society (it was renamed in the 1940s to make it more inclusive) and led its first expedition to Finland. For young people aged 16-23, it is a chance to undertake environmental projects in the most remote wildernesses of the world including the Amazon rainforest, Peruvian Andes, Australian outback, Madagascar and Papua New Guinea.

Its patrons include David Cameron, Sir David Attenborough, Professor David Bellamy, Joanna Lumley and Sir Richard Branson. The Arctic trip is physically very intensive, with the youngsters carrying up to 20 days worth of food with them, making fires, kayaking and mountaineering.

The society’s stated aim is to increase awareness of the natural environment and ‘promote confidence, teamwork and the spirit of adventure’.

Early expeditions collected valuable fieldwork data and brought back specimens for the Natural History Museum and the British Museum, and today’s trips still collaborate with research institutions.

Prospective applicants are selected by interview and must raise their own money for the trip.

On successfully completing an expedition they may join the society, whose members past and present include Tori James, the youngest British woman to climb Everest, author Roald Dahl, and Baron Lewin, Chief of Defence Staff during the Falklands War.

‘I think he was probably in the middle, because the bear grabbed hold of his head next, and then his arm, and I don’t know how Patrick got out to be honest.

‘The polar bear attacked him with his right paw across his face and his head and his arm.’

Mr Flinders told Jersey’s Channel Television: ‘One of the other chaps came out with a rifle and tried to kill the polar bear and didn’t do it.

‘And then the leader tried to kill the polar bear, but just before he killed him apparently, the bear mauled him and he’s really, really bad.’
GROUP WRITE BLOG ABOUT JOY OF SEEING BEARS FOR FIRST TIME

July 27 - After arriving in Longyearbyen to see our first midnight sun we were all so relived to see our tents set up and waiting.

I think we must of all dreamt of polar bears because the next day was (spent) eagerly waiting for the ice flows to break up so we could move on to base camp. There was a polar bear sighting across the fjord about a mile away.

Everyone was in good spirits because we encountered another polar bear floating on the ice, this time we were lucky enough to borrow a kind Norwegian guides telescope to see it properly. After that experience I can say for sure that everyone dreamt of polar bears that night.

We understand the depression causing the Westerly wind may not move off until Sunday. In light of this we have planned to relocate to a more remote part of the Island.

Kyle Gouveia, 17, who was on the expedition, said everyone was given shooting practice on the second day of the trip in case a polar bear attacked.

They also took on ‘bear watches’ at their base camp in Svarlbard and practised using ‘bear flares’, he said.

In a blog about the trip on the website posted on July 27, expedition member Marcus Wright described the group’s excitement at two previous polar bear sightings.

He wrote: ‘I think we must of all dreamt of Polar bears because the next day was eagerly waiting for the ice floes to break up so we could move on to base camp. There was a P.bear sighting across the fjord about a mile away.

‘Everyone was in good spirits because we encountered another P.bear floating on the ice, this time we were lucky enough to borrow an kind Norwegian guide’s telescope to see it properly.

‘After that experience I can say for sure that everyone dreamt of P.bears that night.’

Another blog entry described the training, saying: ‘The teams learnt how to work their stoves, put up their tents and were even trained in polar bear defence which is a requirement if spending time in Svalbard (not that a BSES Expedition has needed it!)’

The archipelago – which has a population of around 2,400 and nearly 3,000 polar bears – attract tourists with its stunning views of ice-covered mountains, fjords and glaciers.
Visitors are urged to carry high-powered rifles whenever venturing outside Svalbard’s capital Longyearbyen and polar bear safety brochure advices campers against setting up their tents in areas where bears roam.

Polar bear researcher Magnus Andersen at the Norwegian Polar Institute said the number of people involved in the attack made it the most serious he has seen.

The last time someone was killed by a polar bear at Svalbard was in 1995, when two people were killed in two different incidents, he said.


Polar bears are one of the few wild species which will actively hunt humans.

At 10ft tall and half a ton in weight, they are the world’s biggest land predators and top the food chain in the Arctic.

The fearsome creatures can smell prey 20 miles away, smash through yards of ice in minutes to reach seals and devour 100lb of meat at a time with their razor-sharp teeth.

They have incredible vision, can run on the ice at 25mph and are also powerful swimmers capable of crossing 30 miles of water at a time, making them extremely difficult to escape.

Although they feed chiefly on marine animals such as seals and young walruses, they are fearless and will stalk any animal when hungry, including humans.
LAND OF THE GOLDEN COMPASS

Svalbard features in Philip Pullman's novel The Golden Compass, the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy.

It tells the story of 12-year-old orphan Lyra, who journeys from Oxford to Svalbard - kingdom of armoured ice bears - to rescue her best friend from the forces of evil.

Lyra's world is set in a parallel universe where everyone is accompanied by their soul in animal form.

And while on her travels, she befriends one of the armoured bears, Iorek, who has been exiled from the region.

The film version of the book was released in 2007.

There have been several previous polar bear attacks on humans in Svalbard, the area where the British teenager was killed.

Last summer a polar bear tore a Norwegian camper from his tent and dragged him 130ft across ice and rocks while he was on a kayak expedition in Svalbard.

Sebastian Plur Nilssen, 22, suffered cuts to his chest, head and neck, but survived by grabbing a rifle and killing the bear with four shots.

Locals said there have also been attacks on a man from Austria and a girl, who both died.

Liv Rose Flygel, 55, an artist and airport worker from Svalbard, said: ‘It’s not the first time. The problem is when the ice goes the bears lose their way and cannot catch food.

‘People don’t really know how dangerous they are. One came down to the sea recently and people were running down to take pictures.’

In nearby Spitzbergen a young polar bear was killed after it attacked a camp where 17 tourists and scientists were staying in 1998.

The campers had scared off the three-year-old male once but it reappeared the following day and charged at two men after they fired warning shots.

Polar bears are well adapted for surviving their hostile, barren environment.

Their double layer of fur and four-inch thick layer of fat means they can live in temperatures of minus 50c.

During the warmer seasons, the bears mate and give birth as they wait for the ice to form, usually in October.
Fearsome: An adult polar bear is one of few species that will actively hunt humans

Fearsome: An adult polar bear is one of few species that will actively hunt humans

Scientists say there are 22,000 to 27,000 polar bears in the world, 60 per cent of them in Canada. They also live in Alaska, Russia, Greenland and Norway.

The species - Ursus maritimus - is now considered 'vulnerable', as the total number of polar bears has fallen to 25,000. However, hunting restrictions have helped the population to stabilise.

The animal is a formidable swimmer, and can swim up to 100 miles in one go through the icy waters of the Arctic.

The world's most famous polar bear was Knut, who was raised by keepers at the Berlin Zoo but died earlier this year.

 

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Polar bear that killed Eton pupil in attack on camp may have had toothache

The polar bear that killed a British teenager in Norway may have been suffering from a toothache when it went on the rampage.

The savage bear attacked a campsite on August 5, killing Eton schoolboy Horatio Chapple, 17, and injuring four other explorers, before being shot dead by the expedition's team leader.

Vets carrying out a post-mortem examination on the dead animal have now discovered that several of the bear's teeth were 'very damaged', which would have put it 'in serious pain'.

This, along with the fact that it was probably starving prior to the attack, made it behave less predictably and more aggressively, according to experts.

'Under two of the canines and many of the incisors, the nerves were exposed,' veterinarian Bjoernar Ytrehus, who carried out the examination, said.

'This causes serious pain and changes the behaviour of bears.'
Intrepid: The last picture of Horatio Chapple, taken on Svalbard two days before the polar bear attack

Intrepid: The last picture of Horatio Chapple, taken on Svalbard two days before the polar bear attack

He added that the dental problems would have forced the carnivore to survive on a diet of vegetables rather than seals - and that it was therefore probably starving when it approached the campsite.

'Starving and suffering, a bear is more unpredictable and aggressive than normal,' Dr Ytrehus said.

Mr Chapple was part of a 13-man expedition organised by the British Schools Exploring Society to the island of Spitsbergen in the Norwegian Arctic.

Searching for clues: The post mortem revealed that several of the bear's teeth were damaged

The team had set up camp on the Von Postbreen glacier and were sleeping in five tents when the 39-stone bear struck.

Students Patrick Flinders, 16, and Scott Smith, 17, who were sharing a tent with Mr Chapple, were seriously injured in the frenzy, as were team leaders Michael Reid and Andrew Ruck, who came to the boys' rescue.

The horror attack ended when Mr Reid was able to shoot the bear in the head.

The expedition's organisers could now face charges of negligence for allegedly failing to follow safety precautions.

BSES Expeditions was advised to post a lookout at each camp and regularly check that its rifles and flare guns were in working order.

It has since emerged that the rifle fired only after several attempts and that a flare gun did not go off at all.

 

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Eaten by Shark during his honeymoon

'I could see the fear in his eyes. I told him, you'll be all right': Shark victim's widow relives the last moments

The anguished bride of shark attack victim Ian Redmond last night told how she tenderly stroked his face and whispered words of comfort as his life ebbed away on a paradise beach.

Teacher Gemma Redmond, 27, knew her 30-year-old husband was moments from death when he was brought ashore in a dinghy with appalling injuries after being savaged while snorkelling off the Seychelles.

Sensing his terror, however, she courageously overcame her own shock and grief to hold him close to her and reassure him that he would pull through.

Describing the aftermath of the deadly attack for the first time, she said: ‘He looked up at me and I looked up at him. And I could see a mixture in his eyes of fear and of realisation – relief that he had seen me and that I was there.

‘I reached out my hand and held his face and I got his hand and held it to my chest and I said to him, “You are going to be all right – we’re going to look after you. We are going to sort you out”.’

Then, choking back tears, she added: ‘I think I told him I love him very much – I hope I did.’

Mr and Mrs Redmond, who shared a passion for adventure and the outdoors, flew to the islands for the honeymoon of their dreams after marrying in their home county of Lancashire.

For ten days, the holiday had proved every bit as exhilarating as they had imagined, as they hiked the lush hills and bathed in topaz waters.

Tuesday started out as another perfect afternoon. After a leisurely shellfish lunch at a palm-shaded restaurant on one of the world’s finest beaches, Anse Lazio, on Praslin Island, Mr Redmond was eager to swim with the turtles.

So they wandered along the powdery white sands to the best viewing point, near some boulders at the far western end of the cove.
Tragedy: Smiling newlyweds Ian Redmond 30, and Gemma Houghton 27 before the shark attack that killed Mr Redmond

Tragedy: Smiling newlyweds Ian Redmond 30, and Gemma Houghton 27 before the shark attack that killed Mr Redmond
Terror on the beach: Anse Lazio, where a killer shark has struck twice

Terror on the beach: Anse Lazio, where a killer shark has struck twice

Just two weeks earlier, a young French holidaymaker, Nicolas Virolle, had been killed by a shark less than 400 yards from that spot, and the island’s tourism chief claims holidaymakers were warned, albeit informally, not to snorkel there.

The authorities in the Seychelles have been criticised for not properly warning tourists of the dangers.

Mrs Redmond said her husband had no idea he was in any danger as he put on his mask and flippers and waded into the tepid shallows.

‘Ian had laughed at me when we were at Denis Island (a nearby outcrop) and heard a man teasing his wife, saying “Ooh, there are sharks and things”.


‘And one of the reasons that we picked the Seychelles was the beautiful waters, the fact that it’s like an underwater aquarium, and there’s not really any dangerous animals.

‘We had heard of the stone fish (a poisonous fish often found in the Indian Ocean) and that you have to be aware of currents when you are snorkelling but we didn’t really think that sharks would be in the Seychelles at all. It wasn’t something we were aware of.’

Lazing in the sun as her IT consultant husband began to explore a calm stretch of water no more than 6ft or 7ft deep, Mrs Redmond hadn’t a care in the world.

‘I could see it was very, very clear. The sea is very beautiful. And I could see him there,’ she said. ‘I could see the top of his snorkel because he had a bright orange band around it, so I could always follow where he was.

‘All of a sudden I heard this “Help!” I thought at first he was sneezing because when he snorkelled the other day he sneezed into his snorkel and it made the most tremendous noise around the bay.

‘So I looked up at this and thought he is sneezing, and I heard it again. I heard “help”. And the most awful scream – I can still hear it now when I close my eyes.

‘He has never screamed like that before because he is such a strong man – so brave.’

Mr Redmond was indeed tall and powerfully built; but at that moment he was being attacked by a force no-one could have withstood.

South African experts are flying to the Seychelles this weekend to try to identify and track down the predator, thought to be a bull shark at least eight-feet long.

Mr Redmond was pulled into the dinghy by two Frenchmen who sailed to his assistance from a yacht moored in the bay.

By the time they reached him, he had lost so much blood that he was already close to death. As the little boat arrived on the shore, Mrs Redmond ran out to meet it.

‘The man who pulled the speedboat in wouldn’t let me go to it and I screamed at him and said “It’s my husband!”. He looked me in the eyes and said, “Go on then”.

‘I could see him laid back in the boat, with his arms out. And he was conscious.’

As she cradled him in her arms, however, the man she had loved for nine years, and with whom she planned to raise a family, slipped away.

Mrs Redmond couldn’t bear to let him go, and they had to be prised gently apart.

‘A man dragged me away. They were very kind, the men. They picked me up and I don’t remember my legs touching the floor and I was very distressed.

‘And then they took him out of the boat and brought him somewhere high up on to the beach.’

Despite criticisms over the lack of warnings following the previous fatal shark attack, Mrs Redmond, who was interviewed by the BBC, refused to criticise the authorities.

Even in the depths of her grief, she was worried for the islanders.

‘The last thing I would want is for any of these events to affect the Seychelles people, their livelihoods and tourism in the area,’ she said.

‘It is a beautiful place, people must come. It is a one-off accident and I know that everyone is doing everything that they can to ensure the islands are safe.’