Black Bear Mauls Sleeping Boy, 13, at Camp

BARTON FLATS, Calif. —  Clambering over two counselors, a marauding black bear severely mauled a sleeping 13-year-old boy at a campground in the San Bernardino National Forest early Tuesday despite the efforts of a third counselor to fight off the animal.

Joshua Isaacs of Ojai was hospitalized at Big Bear Lake with deep scalp and shoulder wounds that required more than 100 stitches, officials said. After surgery, the boy was listed in guarded condition. Two counselors were treated for minor injuries.

“Last night I had dinner at 6 o’clock,” the boy told nurses at Bear Valley Community Hospital. “This morning at 5, the bear ate me for breakfast.”

Trackers with dogs set out after the bear to kill it, partly in an attempt to examine it and find out what caused the highly unusual attack. One concern was that the bear might have rabies.

State Fish and Game Department officials said the 250-pound animal apparently was attracted by food scattered about the campground, where campers and counselors were bedded down in sleeping bags. The officials said candy wrappers, peanut butter sandwiches and apple cores were found at the campsite.

“That’s our big message here--keep that stuff cleaned up because it attracts bears,” said Pat Moore, a spokesman for the department.

Moore said Joshua was part of a group of 150 teen-agers on a Campfire of the Foothills outing at Camp Wasewagan, near Barton Flats on the north flank of Mt. San Gorgonio. The campground, about 25 miles east of San Bernardino, is at an elevation of 6,800 feet.

Lorraine Lawrence, a public information officer with the U.S. Forest Service, said the bear invaded the campground about 5 a.m., scraping two sleeping counselors with its claws as it lumbered over them.

“Bears have claws that are out all the time, so they could do quite a bit of damage walking over you,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence said that as the two counselors--23-year-old Jason Kozleski of Boulder, Colo., and Geertruda Derhaar, 19, of the Netherlands--shouted warnings, the bear continued on its way, heading directly for a dirt embankment where Joshua lay alone, asleep in his sleeping bag.

The boy awoke as the bear began clawing its way into the sleeping bag.

“At first I thought it was a raccoon on my head, but then I noticed it was a bear’s paw,” the boy later told nurses. “I remained very still until I felt his teeth biting my head. Then I screamed.”

Joshua’s screams awoke another counselor, Njal Hansen, 20, of Denmark, who had been sleeping in a lean-to not far from the boy.

“I said, ‘Be quiet, Joshua!’ ” Hansen recalled later. “Then he screamed ‘Help!’ real loud, so I knew something was wrong.”

Hansen said he ran out of the lean-to to find “an animal trying to get inside his sleeping bag.”

“I thought it was a raccoon, so I kicked it,” Hansen said. “It jumped up, and I saw it was a bear. And I screamed very loud.”

The cries of the boy and the shouts of the three adults awoke other counselors, who raced to the site. As some of them pulled the injured boy from the sleeping bag, others banged rocks and--in another tactic someone thought might work--sang camp songs in an effort to scare the bear away.

For a moment, “the bear started toward us,” said Matt Belland, 28, a counselor from Whittier. “It had blood on its face. I was really scared.”

The counselors held the bear at bay for 10 minutes, while the campers were moved to safer ground. Finally, instead of resuming its attack, the bear turned and headed into the woods.

Kozleski, Derhaar and the boy were rushed to the hospital in Big Bear, where Joshua underwent surgery that lasted almost four hours. Dr. Nelson Maldonado, who performed the surgery, said the boy had nearly been scalped.

Kozleski and Derhaar were treated at the hospital for superficial cuts and puncture wounds.

Bonnie Isaacs, the mother of the injured boy, called the incident “a freak accident.”

“You get in the wilderness and there are bears,” she said. “I feel that the counselors handled it very well. They literally saved his life.”

Joshua’s best friend and classmate, Joaquin Arias, 13, had been expecting Joshua home in Ojai on Tuesday, the last day of Joshua’s two-week stay at camp.

“Out of all the kids that were there that could have got bit, it just figures that the bear picked him,” Joaquin said.

Last summer, Joshua had a run-in at the same camp when he was sprayed by a skunk. “He’s always bragging about it,” Joaquin said.

P. J. Wade, the director of the camp, said the campers would spend Tuesday night indoors, sleeping in the cafeteria, the infirmary and other buildings.

She said the campgrounds normally are cleaned up before everyone retires for the night, but because it rained heavily on Monday night, some wrappers and small pieces of food were left on the ground. It was these scraps, officials said, that apparently attracted the bear.

However, Kevin-Barry Brennan, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Fish and Game, said that although the food may have drawn the bear to the campground, that does not explain the attack on the boy.

“There is something peculiar about this animal,” he said.

The apparently unprovoked attack was “something really unusual for black bears to do,” Moore said.

“They’re usually pretty easygoing critters, just looking for food,” he said. “They’re usually easily scared off.”

Brennan said two trackers with dogs searched for the bear for three hours but gave up the search when they were unable to find a trail.

“We’re going to sit up here and wait for him to come back,” said Joel Shows, one of the trackers. “He’s going to go to one of these camps. . . . He’s used to eating here. It’s like his grocery store.”

Bonnie Isaacs said her son, who has said he’d like to be a zoologist someday, has been attending the camp for the last five years and “he loves the place.”

“I’m sure he’ll be back next summer,” she said.

Cone reported from Barton Flats; Malnic from Los Angeles. Also contributing to this story were special correspondents Sara Catania from Ojai and Leslie Hoffman in Big Bear.

Bear Attack

A teen-ager at a youth campout was mauled by a black bear that also left two camp counselors slightly injured in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday. The boy was hospitalized in guarded condition after receiving about 100 stitches.