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Team coverage Last summer brought the first-ever recorded fatal attack of a black bear on a human in Utah. Today, the family of the boy who was killed sued the government.
The parents of 11-year-old Samuel Ives say they should have been warned an aggressive bear was in the area and had attacked earlier in the day. People at the Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) say they too feel that loss.
The bear that killed Samuel Ives was a marked animal, hunted by the DWR. The family argues if wildlife officers knew an aggressive bear was in the area, they should have been warned.
Chocking back tears, Sam's stepfather, Tim Mulvey, tried to tell what it has been like since Sam was killed. "Trying to be a family again is just excruciating, just seemingly impossible," he said.
Sam and his family went camping on Father's Day in a new tent he bought for his stepfather. The family pitched the multi-room tent in a popular campsite about a mile from the developed Timpooneke Campground in American Fork Canyon.
"We started to feel some shaking in the tent, but we didn't hear a sound," Mulvey said. "As soon as we came to our senses and got up we were trying to figure out what was going on. We didn't even know Sam was gone at that point."
While it was reported by his parents to 911 as an abduction, police discovered Sam had actually been killed by a bear.
Allen Young, the family's attorney, said, "This very bear had been in that very campground that very morning and had been determined by the state and federal government to be a nuisance bear."
The DWR classified that bear as a public safety threat to be pursued and killed. They did not get to it in time but killed the bear 12 hours after the boy's death.
The family insists they knew the dangers of bears in the wild. But they believe that the fact the bear was causing trouble and nothing was done to warn the public warrants the lawsuits seeking millions in damages.
"If there wasn't an attack the night before, we wouldn't be here arguing it. I mean, we know bears exist," said Kevan Francis, Sam's father.
Ives' mother, Rebecca, said, "Why wasn't that done? We would have known something was up if there was just some yellow tape, a piece of plastic, and I would still have my son."
The Utah Attorney General's Office says wildlife officers followed established policies and acted reasonably with the information they were given. The DWR has not seen the lawsuit and has not yet completed a review of its bear management policy after the death.
The department, though, says this is not the time to debate whether the warnings about bears were sufficient at the campground, as it was the first recorded death by a black bear in Utah history.
Dean Mitchell, the Conservation Outreach Chief, said, "Has never happened before in Utah, and so this was a very, very unfortunate circumstance."
Bears wandered into a number of Utah campgrounds last year, a few of which authorities closed. The fatal attack took an emotional toll on some at the DWR, especially those who tracked and eventually killed the bear. "This was an absolutely tragic event, but what it did was it opened the eyes of people that use our backcountry that hey we do have wild animals out here and we do have black bears out here," Mitchell said.
The family wants to see what they call a "Sam Alert", a new federal requirement that campers be notified that a nuisance bear is in the area. The DWR officer says that sounds like a good idea, but notifying people in developed and undeveloped campgrounds could present problems, so the idea would need to be developed.
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