Bear attack
NEWS 8 EXCLUSIVE
An Aledo man and his family faced a grizzly bear and rescued their fellow campers in an early-morning attack near Yellowstone National Park on Wednesday.
The bear killed a man from Michigan and wounded two other people.
"To wake up to something crunching on your arm... I can't describe the feeling," said Deb Freele, who survived the attack thanks to Texas biologist Don Wilhelm and his family, who were in a nearby tent at the Soda Butte campground not far from Cooke City, Montana.
"We were honking, trying to scare off the bear," said Wilhelm in a telephone interview with News 8. "We yelled at her that we were going to go get help."
Don Wilhelm heard the attack at 2 a.m., put his family in their sport utility vehicle and warned surrounding campers.
When the bear was gone, he went back to Freele's tent and attended to her wounds.
"She had been bitten and her arm was fractured," Wilhelm said. "She had puncture wounds in her arm."
Wilhelm is a biologist based in Arlington who works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Co-worker Patty Hulsey knew he was camping in Yellowstone when she heard about the deadly attack.
"It was just horrifying at first, before we found out that he was not one of them that was hurt," Hulsey said, adding that she was not surprised to learn that Wilhelm led the rescue effort — or that he tried to leave camp without a "thank you" from the survivors.
"I wish I remembered their names, or if they even gave me their names," Freele said. " I just want to thank them for helping me."
Yellowstone rangers caught the grizzly bear and two cubs, and could re-open the campground.
Wilhelm told News 8 he's already had enough excitement for one vacation. "We're not going to tent camp for the rest of this trip, nor are we going to walk around much at night, I don't think," he said. "But we are going to stay here and try to let the kids have a good time for the next couple of days."
Wilhelm said he was upset to learn that the man from Michigan died, but he was glad he could help the woman from Canada and a teenager who had bites to his legs.
E-mail cnorton@wfaa.com
