Bear Suspected in Attack on Boy Is Killed

A federal game official Sunday shot and killed the small black bear believed to be the one that mauled an 8-year-old Watts boy last week at an overnight camp in the Angeles National Forest.

Officials from the state Department of Fish and Game, along with a rifleman from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, had been tracking the animal around the clock since the July 10 incident. In the attack, a small bear took a couple of swipes at a sleeping Juan Valle, leaving the child with three deep gashes on his face and head.

Animal regulators identified three bears in the area--at one point catching and then releasing a bear that they deemed too large to have been the one that attacked Juan. On Sunday afternoon, they finally took a 100-pound male bear whose seven-inch track marks matched those around the boy’s sleeping area, a Fish and Game spokeswoman said.

“The guys in the field did everything they possibly could to make sure that this was the right bear,” said spokeswoman Alexia Retallack. “We won’t say it’s absolute until we have forensic evidence from the scene that we can use for DNA testing to compare to the bear we’ve taken.”

A test for rabies will be completed within a couple of days, but a full necropsy could take a few weeks, Retallack said.

Juan had been attending UCLA’s UniCamp, which for more than 60 years has conducted a free camp for underprivileged Los Angeles County children.