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Black Bear Killed
After Death of Canadian Athlete
July 11, 2000 QUEBEC (Reuters) - A bear believed to be the one that killed Mary-Beth Miller, a 24-year-old hopeful for Canada's Olympic biathlon team, has been killed at the request of a Quebec coroner, police said Friday. Police said the coroner asked that the bear be killed so a complete medical examination and DNA tests could be conducted to confirm it was the one that killed Miller. "We are at 90 percent sure that the bear we captured and killed was the woman's killer," Haute St-Charles, Quebec, police officer Sarah Coup-Fabiano told Reuters. She said the black bear was captured Wednesday night and killed Thursday. Coup-Fabiano said that pawprints from the four-year-old 165-pound female bear matched prints found at the site where Miller was mauled to death Sunday morning. Its teeth were also similar to those that left wounds on the victim's head and neck. The young athlete from the Northwest Territories was killed while on a training run along a forest path at the Valcartier military base near Quebec City. Wildlife officials suspect the bear had become aggressive because she did not have any cubs, despite carrying breast milk. Miller's colleagues alerted military police when she failed to return from her training run. Police later found her body on the forest path. Since then, the path has been closed and cages have installed along it to capture bears in the area. Two cyclists were attacked by a bear on the same path three weeks ago. BACK to Animal Attack Files Index Tell a Friend about the Animal Attack Files |
