Woman and 1-year-old son killed by polar bear in remote Alaska village identified

Officers have recognized a girl and her 1-year-old son who have been killed by a polar bear in a distant village in western Alaska. 

Summer season Myomick, 24, of Saint Michael, Alaska, and her 1-year-old son Clyde Ongtowasruk have been attacked and killed by a polar bear close to a faculty in Wales, on the western tip of the Seward Peninsula, Alaska State Troopers stated Tuesday.

“Preliminary reviews point out {that a} polar bear had entered the neighborhood and had chased a number of residents,” troopers wrote. “The bear fatally attacked an grownup feminine and juvenile male.”

The bear was shot and killed by a neighborhood resident because it attacked the pair, troopers stated.

Troopers and the state Division of Fish and Recreation are planning to journey to Wales as soon as climate permits for it, the dispatch stated. Alaska State Troopers have notified the victims’ subsequent of kin and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been notified of the incident.

Wales is a small, predominantly Inupiaq city of about 150 folks, simply over 100 miles northwest of Nome.

Deadly polar bear assaults have been uncommon in Alaska’s latest historical past. In 1990, a polar bear killed a person farther north of Wales within the village of Level Lay. Biologists later stated the animal confirmed indicators of hunger, the Anchorage Each day Information reported.

Alaska scientists on the U.S. Geological Survey in 2019 discovered modifications in sea ice habitat had coincided with proof that polar bears’ use of land was rising and that the probabilities of a polar bear encounter had elevated.