“Before the incident, the couple separated. When the man returned, he found the woman injured. Then he immediately called for help. He did not see directly what happened,” police spokeswoman Anna Oleniaczová told Fakt newspaper.
The man came running after hearing his mother’s screams while on the phone with his family, the website of the regional Radio Rzeszów described. After calling for help, paramedics, firefighters and the mountain service went to the scene.
However, the woman later succumbed to severe injuries on the spot.
According to some Polish media, the woman may have been attacked by a bear walking through the forest with her three cubs born last year, but this has not yet been confirmed. The woman came from the nearby town of Mokra.
The attack itself took place relatively close to the village of Plonna. “It was definitely not in the middle of a deep forest,” Wojciech Jankowski, a spokesman for local foresters, told the Onet website.
“At this time of the year, bears that have already woken up from hibernation come to such places near people’s homes and look for food. They usually avoid people. Here there was an unexpected meeting for both the bear and the person. The animal probably got scared and attacked,” says Jankowski.
The population of bears in Poland is estimated at 100 to 200 individuals, most of them live in the mentioned region. According to an earlier study by Czech experts, there are more than 1,000 of them in Slovakia, ČTK pointed out in this connection, with the fact that several attacks by this beast on humans have been reported in recent years, including those with fatal consequences.
