More details:
A U.S. Army soldier who stumbled across a brown bear den and was surprised by a “flash of brown mass” was killed in a bear attack on Tuesday while scouting a wilderness area on an Alaska military base, a state wildlife official said.
Three soldiers had come across the den while mapping out a training site for a land navigation course on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, said Capt. Derek DeGraaf, commander of the Northern Detachment of the Alaska Wildlife Troopers, an agency that enforces wildlife laws. The soldiers’ arrival prompted the mother bear, or sow, to crawl outside, he said. She ran away after knocking down one soldier and attacking a second, who later died.
“From the soldier’s perspective, there was a flash of brown mass,” he said. “They were attacked and didn’t even see it coming.”
The soldier who had been knocked down was treated for minor injuries at a nearby hospital and released, Captain DeGraaf said. The joint Army and Air Force base declined to release the name of the deceased soldier on Wednesday, pending family notification, and provided no further details about other soldiers involved in the episode. Captain DeGraaf said the two soldiers were both men around 30 years old.
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