Aug 14, 2008 11:20 pm US/Eastern
Boy Mauled By Bear In Tennessee Returns To Florida
Fatal Encounters With Black Bears Are Rare
"It was just pushing me into the ground and it made my teeth right into a rock," said Evan.
BOCA RATON (CBS4) ―
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A black bear cub similiar to the one pictured above attacked a young boy and his father in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee.
AP
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Evan Pala of Boca Raton and his father have been released from a Tenn. hospital after attacked by a black bear.
CBS News
Thursday night a South Florida boy was back home after a confrontation he will never forget. The 8-year old was attacked by a bear while on vacation.
Evan Pala came home to hugs, and he came home with quite a story.
"That's where he had him in his mouth. He was taking him away. He was carrying him away," said his father John, as he described the incident at Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
The 8-year-old Florida boy and his father were treated and released from a hospital after battling a black bear in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, officials said Tuesday. Evan his father, of Boca Raton, were discharged from Fort Sanders Sevier Medical Center on Monday evening within hours of the incident in the park, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Evan was greeted by hugs from his family and friends, and his mom had a basket of cookies shaped like bears to welcome him back.
"It was just pushing me into the ground and it made my teeth right into a rock," said Evan in a previous interview.
Luckily he got away with only a lot of bruising and many stitches.
"I immediately ran in there, five seconds, as fast as I could," said his father John. "I didn't even know I could run that fast, grabbed the bear by the face, and pushed it off to the side."
Even big brother Alex helped.
"I started throwing sticks and stones to scare it off so it doesn't get Evan a second or third time," said Alex Pala.
Park spokesman Bob Miller said the bear approached the boy around 7:30 p.m. Monday while Evan was playing in a creek about 300 yards up Rainbow Falls Trail, a popular hiking trail about 2.5 miles south of Gatlinburg.
Miller said the bear attacked the boy, was driven off and came back a second time.
Finally, the father was able to drive the bear off with rocks and sticks, Miller said.
The boy suffered cuts, scratches and some puncture wounds. The father received several cuts during the attack.
Rangers found the bear in a spot matching the father's description. When the bear acted aggressively toward them, they shot it. They found a child's shoe and a cap there believed to have belonged to the family.
The animal was taken to the University of Tennessee Veterinary Medical Center for a necropsy to establish that it was the bear that attacked the child, Miller said.
Fatal encounters with black bears are rare. The North American Bear Center lists 60 people killed by black bears across North America since 1900, with 45 of those in Alaska or Canada.
But there have been two fatal attacks in eastern Tennessee: a Tennessee school teacher was killed in 2000 by a female bear and cub during a day hike in the Great Smokies and an Ohio family was attacked in 2006 in Cherokee National Forest, killing a 6-year-old girl and injuring her 2-year-old brother and mother.
Evan's mom hopes the cookies are as close as Evan gets to a bear from now on, and says his days in the wilderness are over.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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