Bears 'Drag Away, Eat' Tourists Killed In Helicopter Crash

The bodies of three tourists who died in a helicopter crash in Russia were dragged away and eaten by bears, reports said.

The victims, 25-year-old pilot and former biathlete Igor Malinovskii and the two passengers Sergey Kolesnyak and Zoya Kaygorodova, died in a helicopter crash in the Kamchatka peninsula far east Siberia on July 16.

The helicopter lost contact due to bad weather and is believed to have caught fire before it crashed, Lad Bible reported.

A day later, officials discovered the charred remains of the helicopter from the crash site. However, the victims' bodies were found near the Semyachkov Pass, away from the crash site.

The authorities believe that brown bears could have found the dead bodies at the crash site, dragged them away, and fed on them. However, it is unclear if the tourists were already deceased when the bears found them at the crash site, Explorers Web reported.

The accident happened during a nine-day luxury tour of the region organized for Kolesnyak, a 39-year-old mobile phone company executive, and Kaygorodova, a businesswoman in her mid-30s. The trip cost is around $5,000, according to local reports.

"The helicopter with two passengers and a pilot was on a private flight; the group was not registered as tourists," Vladimir Solodov, Governor of the Kamchatka Territory said after the crash.

Malinovskii, five times junior world biathlon champion turned pilot after retiring from his athletic career. During the pandemic, he retrained himself as a helicopter pilot and joined his father's company that transports tourists across Kamchatka in the far eastern Siberian peninsula.

The Kamchatka region is a popular tourist destination known for volcanoes and glaciers. The region also has the highest recorded density of brown bears on Earth.

Male Kamchatka brown bears are among the largest bears in the world and could reach a weight of 700 kilograms due to their access to rich food sources like salmon, pine nuts, and berries.

Although brown bears usually attack human beings only when threatened, they are good hunters and readily scavenge on dead creatures.