Md. Woman Makes Calls To 911 During Vicious Bear Attack

Frederick, Md. (WJZ) -- A Frederick county woman is in the hospital after barely surviving a bear attack. It is the first such incident in at least eight decades in Maryland. WJZ has her frantic calls for help.

The bear was familiar to the people in the neighborhood. The bear had a shoulder injury, and was looking for easy food.

Paul Paditto, with the Department of Natural Resources, says the woman was in the wrong place at the wrong time, as the bear was nearby with its three cubs.

In the calls to 911, you can hear the haunting voice of 63-year-old Karen Osborne on the phone with a dispatcher. She was able to get into the fetal position and call 911, as she was being mauled by a bear in her driveway near Frederick.

Osborne: A bear has attacked me. I'm laying in the driveway.
Dispatcher: What attacked you?
Osborne: A bear, and it is still here. Please help me, hurry. He has broken my arms and my legs. I can't move, and I'm bleeding and I'm gonna die.

Listen to the 911 call below:

Osborne: Oh my God. Here he comes. Oh Lord, please. Dear God no. He's getting ready to attack me again. Please tell my husband I love him.

Osborne heard her dog barking and went to check on him. What she didn't know was the dog had cornered a bear cub in a tree, and she got between the bear cub and the mother bear, who charged her four times.

Disptacher: Where's the bear now? Do you see it?
Osborne: Right behind me. He's behing me and he's snorting and stomping and he's kick in the ground like he's getting ready to attack.

Osborne continued to calmly talk with dispatchers as the bear got closer.

Osborne: Oh my God, he's circled around in front of me again. He's trying to kill me. Please don't leave me. Please don't leave me.

"The officer told me that the second time she called he could hear the bear, there. We got lucky this could've ended up a lot worse," said Mark Snuffins, Osborne's son-in-law.

The woman is still hospitalized, after receiving almost 80 stitches in wounds to her arm, scalp and torso, and suffering a broken arm.

Officials tracked the bear, which had been tagged with a radio collar earlier in the year and had a past history of getting into chicken coops in the area. They believe the same bear had been in a car accident, as it had a severely damaged right shoulder.

The authorities euthanized the bear. The mother bear had three bear cubs, but they are all big enough to survive on their own.

Osborne is very lucky to be alive. She has various puncture wounds, and has gone through several surgeries, but she is going to survive this.

There are now more than 2000 adult and sub-adult bears in western Maryland, thought that was a population that was near extinction a few decades ago. It's policy in Maryland to put a bear down if it attacks a human.

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