Officials Confirm They Got Killer Bear

The bear tracked down and killed by wildlife officers and hounds Monday was the one that dragged an 11-year-old boy from his family's tent in the Utah wilderness and killed him, officials said after an examination of its remains.

Authorities also said the bear, weighing as much as 300 pounds, probably was the same one who had been harassing other campers earlier in the weekend.

The dead boy's grandfather blamed federal foresters Tuesday for not warning about the earlier complaints.

"We're hoping that the Forest Service will do a better job protecting campers. It's been like a surreal nightmare," Eldon Ives told reporters at a news conference on his front lawn.

"The violent way he was taken is a sorrow that will never heal," Ives said.

Katie Baker of CBS station KUTV reports the first complaint about an "aggressive bear" was received Saturday night. Another was made Sunday, harassing another group of campers in the same spot before dawn Sunday. Kurt Francom said his son, Jake, was kicked in the head through a tent wall.

"It could have been my boy," said Francom, a school custodian.

"It hit me right in the face twice, and I raised my head up and it hit the side of the tent and smacked my head back down in," Jake Francom told KUTV.

Wildlife officers gave chase with more than two dozen dogs after the Sunday morning incident, but didn't catch the bear.

Sam Ives, the boy who died, his mother, stepfather and a 6-year-old brother were sleeping in a large tent Sunday night in American Fork Canyon, about 30 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, when the stepfather heard the boy scream "something's dragging me."

The boy and his sleeping bag were gone. The cut in the nylon tent was so clean, his family first believed the boy had been abducted, U.S Forest Service officers said.

Without a flashlight, the stepfather searched frantically for Sam and then drove a mile down a dirt road to a developed campground.

"He was pounding on my trailer door. He said somebody cut his tent and took his son," said John Sheely, host of the Timpooneke campground, who alerted authorities by driving down the canyon to a pay phone.

The boy's body was found about 400 yards away from the campsite, said Lt. Dennis Harris of the Utah County sheriff's office.

"Truly a tragic event, said Jim Karpowitz, director of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. "Events of this type are extremely rare in Utah."

He declined to say how the confirmation of the bear's identity was made "out of respect for the family."

Sam Ives would have been a sixth-grader at Valley View Elementary School in Pleasant Grove, Utah, this fall.

Authorities said the death was Utah's first fatal attack on a human by a black bear. It follows reports of several bear sightings during spring and occurred just hours after other people in the same primitive campsite likely encountered the same animal.

All over the West, drought and a resulting lack of food have brought bears into areas they don't usually visit, reports CBS News Early Show national correspondent Hattie Kauffman. Not just campsites, but suburbs.

In May, officials reported black bears in Provo Canyon and Park City, including one that ripped through a screen door at a cabin where residents had burned food and opened windows.

Officers killed that bear because it showed no fear when biologists tried to scare it away with firecrackers, the wildlife agency said.

In July 2006, a black bear bit the arm of a 14-year-old Boy Scout while he slept in a tent, also in Utah County. The female bear returned to the campground and was killed.

"When it's hot and dry like this, bears are short on food and they go looking for food. And sometimes they create problems," Karpowitz said.

Black bears, which are found in 27 states, are "generally less aggressive than other bears and don't prey on humans," said Stewart Breck, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The typical human-bear conflicts involve bears breaking into homes or cars.

"But it's not breaking into a tent and killing," Breck said.