Victim of Grizzly Attack Was 65-Year-Old Nurse

Bear pulled her from her tent in Montana town
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 8, 2021 1:02 PM CDT
Victim of Grizzly Attack Was 65-Year-Old Nurse
Jacobsen Creek, a tributary of the North Fork of the Blackfoot River near Ovando, Mont.   (Jennifer Michaelis/The Missoulian via AP, FIle)

Authorities in Montana are still trying to track down and kill a grizzly bear that pulled a woman from her tent and killed her early Tuesday. More details on the attack that horrified the small town of Ovando were released Wednesday, the Great Falls Tribune reports. The state's Fish, Wildlife, and Parks department said the victim, identified as 65-year-old California woman Leah Davis Lokan, and two companions in an adjacent tent were woken up by bear around 3am. After it ran away, "the three campers removed food from their tents, secured it, and went back to bed," an FWP release states. But the bruin returned and attacked Lokan around 30 minutes later. The two other campers, Lokan's sister and a friend, drove it off with bear spray and it did not return again.

The three campers, who had been on a long-distance bicycling trip, had been camping within town limits, near the post office, authorities say. The FWP release says the approximately 400-pound bear also broke into a chicken coop and killed and ate several chickens while it was in the town. Helicopters have been used in the search for the bear, but FWP experts believe culvert traps set up near the coops could be their best chance of catching it. Friends say Lokan, a nurse who worked at a hospital in Chico, loved adventure and had been looking forward to the trip for months. "A woman in her 60s, and she's doing this kind of stuff—she had a passion for life that was out of the ordinary," friend Mary Flowers tells CBS. (More bear attack stories.)

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