Bear Swats Sparta Toddler
By Rob Jennings
Daily Record
May 21, 2003
SPARTA - A black bear swatted a 2-year-old boy outside his family’s home Tuesday afternoon, police said.
Mark Tregidgo suffered a bump to the head but was otherwise uninjured in the 1:19 p.m. incident, Police Sgt. Russell Smith said.
The 150-pound, 4-year-old female bruin was shot and killed by police shortly afterward, Smith said. The frightening incident, although extremely rare, is expected to strengthen calls for a statewide bear hunt.
The bear batted at the boy with the pad of her paw, and not the claws, state Division of Environmental Protection spokesman Jack Kaskey said.
Tregidgo’s mother, Amy, watched in horror from inside her Deer Field Road house as the bear approached her young son on the porch steps. She raced outside, picked up her wounded son and called 911.
But Tregidgo, an animal lover with five cats and a dog, had sympathetic words for the dead bear.
"It did not strike my son as an attack strike," Tregidgo said. "It was more like, ‘What are you - are you a toy?’"
Because the bear struck a person, it was immediately dubbed a Category 1 bear. Under DEP guidelines, Category 1 bears do not get any second chances.
Amy Tregidgo said that after swatting her son, the bear went into a neighbor's yard and relieved itself before returning to their property. Police Sgt. Joe Schetting, who is trained to handle aggressive bears, then fired up to three gunshots into the bear.
Tregidgo said she pleaded for the bear’s life, to no avail.
I’m upset about it. I’m devastated," Tregidgo said.
"It didn’t harm my son," she said of the dead bear. "It was just curious."
She said she appreciated the quick police response. "I just wish it could’ve gone a different way," she said.
Kaskey said the bear had previously been tagged by wildlife workers, but was not viewed as potentially dangerous until Tuesday’s incident.
"There was no prior history," Kaskey said.
On Thursday, the state Fish and Game Council will hold a public hearing in Trenton on proposed amendments to the state gaming code, council member Jack Schrier of Mendham Township said. One of the amendments would permit New Jersey’s first black bear hunt since 1970.
"Talk about good timing," said Schrier, who cast the only dissenting vote in March when the council first proposed a six-day hunt in December. A final vote is expected next month, Schrier added.
Council member Richard Culp of Jefferson said Tuesday’s incident made him more committed than ever to a hunt.
"Somebody is going to get killed someday, or badly mauled, and I don’t want to see it," Culp said.
In the past three decades, New Jersey’s bear population has skyrocketed from approximately 100 to about 2,000 bruins, though the actual number is widely disputed. Schrier said a hunt could result in the deaths of 500 or more bears.
There has never been a fatal attack by a black bear in New Jersey, supporters of a hunt fear that one is inevitable. A 5-month-old infant was killed in upstate New York last year (read article).
"They’re going to put this together with the New York incident and say it's only a matter of time. That’s the mantra," said Schrier, who argued that a hunt would do little, if anything, to protect public safety.
"You’re going to go into the woods and come across the most benign black bear, and he’s going to be killed," he said.
As alternatives, Schrier supports additional emphasis on "bear-proofing" private property, along with "adverse conditioning" of nuisance bears and continuing DEP’s policy of killing dangerous bruins.
Reflecting on her family’s scare by telephone Tuesday evening, Amy Tregidgo said that she and her son had been watching "Tom and Jerry" cartoons earlier in the day.
"I decided to go to the ladies’ room. From the time I went to the bathroom, to the time I came out, (Mark) had opened the screen porch door and sat down on the stairs," Tregidgo said.
"I looked outside, and there’s Mark, and there was the bear," she said.
Rescue workers treated her son, but she declined a hospital visit. "It's a lump. It was a pressure shot, like if somebody was to hit their head on a rock," Tregidgo said.
"There’s no cuts. No bleeding. He just got a nice wallop."
Mark Tregidgo was frightened for some time after the incident, but had calmed down by the evening.
"He was terrified," his mother said. "He kept smacking his head, going, ‘bear bear bear.’"
She and her husband, Django, also have an 11-year-old daughter, Crystal.
Bears are an increasingly common sight, particularly in northwest New Jersey. Statewide, Fish and Wildlife received 1,412 damage complaints concerning black bears last year, up from 1,096 in 2001.
"There’s a 700-pound bear that roams around here and nobody can seem to catch it," Tregidgo said.
Special note - This little baby paid the price for his mother’s foolish ideas about wild animals. In the next article, we learn that:
"The mother of the Sparta boy admitted to feeding bears a year ago, but said she stopped even before a law forbidding such feeding took effect. Feeding black bears is dangerous because it leads them to associate people with food and to become more aggressive." Read this article...
Article source: http://www.dailyrecord.com/news/articles/news1-BEAR.htm
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