Altha Williams 90 years old, Sevierville, Tennessee woman survives bear attack outside her front porch, fighting off lunging predator with lawn chair.
They usually get scared and run off. Except for the lunging black bear which had its sights set on Altha Williams earlier this week…
90-year-old Tennessee woman, Altha Williams has lived to tell of the moment she came across a black bear outside her Sevierville home and being forced to fight off the predator with just her lawn chair.
Miraculously, Williams only suffered a scratch to her arm after the bear — who was with three cubs — attacked her while she was out sitting on the front porch on Wednesday, WVLT News reported.
‘It just made a lunge at me,’ Williams said, adding the bear’s ‘face was right in my face.’
‘I was just sitting here, hadn’t been here more than two or three minutes. Evidently it heard me.’
‘They usually got scared and ran off’
Williams, who lives near the Smoky Mountains National Park, said she used her lawn chair in a bid to scare the wild animal off.
‘I’ve been praising the Lord ever since then, because I may not be here,’ Williams said.
While the elderly woman didn’t suffer any major injuries, she had to be treated at hospital for a laceration on her arm.
Williams who has lived in the same house for 45 years, said that in the past, when encountering bears outside the home, they usually got scared and ran off.
The bear involved in the latest encounter was eventually tracked down by the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency and euthanized.
‘After the mother bear swatted at the victim, it left that area and, from what we are told, it charged another neighbor who shot it,’ an agency spokesperson said.
Under state guidelines, bears who injure humans in a residential neighborhood are then put down.
‘We don’t just euthanize bears based on personal feelings,’ he said. ‘Once a bear has made contact with a person and caused injury, we have no choice but to euthanize it. It can’t be relocated.’
