5-Year-Old Mistook Bear For Dog, Got Attacked Outside Her Home, Severely Injured

In a rare instance, a 5-year-old girl was attacked by a large, black bear outside her home in Colorado, Sunday.

According to a press release from Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), the girl was inside her house when she heard a noise coming from outside her home in the dead of night. Thinking it was her dog that was making the sounds, the girl went outside her home — located in East Orchard Mesa, above the Colorado River corridor, in Grand Junction — to investigate the source.

Around 2:30 a.m. local time (4:30 a.m. EDT), the girl’s mother woke up to screams of her daughter coming from outside of the house. After she went outside, she found to her horror that the 5-year-old was being dragged away by a bear. The wild beast eventually dropped the child when the latter’s mother began screaming at the bear.

The girl — identified by her father as Kimberly Cyr — was rushed to the St. Mary’s Medical Center with serious injuries. The child was said to be in a fair and stable condition by Sunday afternoon. Chief operating officer Bryan Johnson said Cyr’s family did not want to release any more details regarding the incident.

Dr. Charles Breaux, the pediatric surgeon at St. Mary’s Medical Center in Grand Junction, Colorado, said Cyr was the “calmest person in the room” even though she had to undergo nearly three-hour surgery to repair soft tissues which were damaged by bear bites. Although she received hundreds of stitches, she did not sustain any fractures.

Law enforcement deployed hounds in the area in order to aid CPW officials track down the bear that attacked the child. Local residents have been warned to expect the hounds to stick around in the area. They have also been asked to “secure trash, keep pet food inside and immediately report any bear sightings in this neighborhood, or any residential area.”

One neighbor, Kathy Harris, told ABC News: "They were here from 3 this morning until just an hour ago. And they had dogs out here tracking it, but they didn't pick up a scent, which is kind of odd I think because they had those dogs out here probably within a half hour [of the attack], evidently. That's what they said. But they didn't pick no scent up."

In addition to that, wildlife officials have set up three bear traps, which will be monitored by them in the next few days. “We intend to catch this bear,” a CPW spokesman added. “Based on bear behavior, it’s possible this bear will come back to the area.”

If the bear is caught, a CPW Public Information Officer Rebecca Ferrell told ABC News that it will be put down and a necropsy will be performed to determine what caused the incident.

Ferrell added it was possible that Cyr took the bear by surprise since it might not have expected any human being around at that hour.

"It's 2:30 in the morning, they're not expecting people to be out and about" Ferrell said.

"We've seen their tracks. They go through at night usually," a neighbor, Robert Helmer, said. "And there's been some bears sighted in the daytime here. ... But usually they come around after dark."