Polar bear kills woman and child in Alaska village, troopers say. ‘Incredibly tragic’

A rampaging polar bear killed a woman and child in a remote Alaska village before being shot dead by another resident, Alaska State Troopers reported.

The bear entered Wales at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 17, and began chasing residents, troopers said in a news release.

The animal attacked and killed a woman and a boy in the village, troopers said. A resident shot and killed the bear during the attack.

Troopers are traveling to the remote village as weather allows, the release said. They did not identify the two people slain in the attack or their relationship to each other.

“Over the past few decades, it’s been very, very rare for those types of attacks to occur,” Joseph Jessup McDermott, executive director of the Alaska Nannut Co-Management Council, told the Anchorage Daily News. “It’s incredibly tragic it happened.”

The last fatal polar bear attack in Alaska took place in 1990 north of Wales, according to the publication.

Though the polar bear population near Wales is considered stable, the loss of ice due to climate change has forced more bears onto land, resulting in more encounters with humans, McDermott said.

Wales is a community of about 150 people on the Bering Strait, about 645 miles northwest of Anchorage.

The village’s website describes it as “one of the oldest communities in the Bering Strait region.” In Inupiaq, the village’s name is Kingigin.

This story was originally published January 18, 2023 at 9:47 AM with the headline "Polar bear kills woman and child in Alaska village, troopers say. ‘Incredibly tragic’."