Woman Mauled to Death By Pet Bear

By Amanda Pendolino on October 5th, 2009

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Kelly Ann Walz, a 37 year-old woman from Pennsylvania, passed away Sunday after being mauled by her 350-pound pet black bear. CNN reportsthat she was attacked when she entered the bear’s cage to feed it and clean its cage, according to Pennsylvania State Police. The bear lived in a 15-by-15-foot steel and concrete enclosure on her property in Ross Township.

Kelly kept even more exotic animals as pets; she had a permit to keep a Bengal tiger and an African lion, and the property routinely passed inspection and had no violations, according to an official with the State Game Commission. A neighbor reportedly shot and killed the bear after it attacked Kelly; an investigation is continuing.

I don’t quite understand how it’s legal to keep 350-pound animals as pets. (I’m also not sure why you would want to.) According to Wikipedia, black bears don’t typically try to attack humans, and there have been more deaths from grizzly bear attacks than black bear attacks. However, 16 North Americans have been killed by black bears since the year 2000, a seemingly high statistic considering that there have been only 56 total documented killings of humans by black bears in North America in the past 100 years.