Bear with cubs attacks 74-year-old man inside southwestern Colorado home

A 74-year-old Colorado man is recovering from significant injuries after being attacked Thursday night by a bear with three cubs inside his Lake City home.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife said the bear and cubs got into the house through a sliding glass door that was cracked open. The man was sitting a few feet away from the door, heard noises and saw the bears getting in. The man tried to use a kitchen chair to get the bears back outside, but the sow charged the man and knocked him to the floor, where she stood over him, CPW said in a news release. 

The mother bear swiped at the man, “who incurred significant wounds from being clawed, including wounds to the head, neck, both arms, lower abdomen, shoulder and calf.” He got away and locked himself in a bedroom. He was treated on scene. 

“It’s certainly lucky we didn’t have a fatality, because it was close,” CPW wildlife Officer Lucas Martin said in a written statement. 

After getting hazed out of the house and climbing into a tree, the four bears were euthanized by CPW officials. The bears were sent to the agency’s health lab for a necropsy and testing for diseases.

“Clearly, these bears were highly habituated and were willing to enter an occupied house with the residents sitting just feet away,” CPW Area Wildlife Manager Brandon Diamond said in a written statement. “When a bear reaches this level of human habituation, clearly a lot of interaction with people has already happened, and unless communities are working with us collaboratively and communicating issues, we have no opportunity to intervene.”

Before the attack, there had been talk in Lake City of bears getting into garages and homes and some mentioned sows with cubs. CPW’s Martin said officials heard “through the rumor mill or grapevine” of bears getting into homes this summer, but they’ve only received eight official reports of bear activity in Hinsdale County.

 “Often, people want to get on social media and post about it, but they never actually call the authorities,” he said. “We don’t only want calls when something escalates to this level. We want to be able to do some management before things get to this level.”

According to CPW, it is the first reported bear attack this year in Colorado, compared with six reports in 2023. There have been 96 reported bear attacks on humans in Colorado dating back to 1960. 

“We’ve talked about this for decades — access to human food sources, including trash and bird feeders, is what leads to escalating and sometimes dangerous behavior from black bears,” Martin said in a statement. “The result is a lose-lose for bears and people.”