Wolf may have killed Slippery Rock native in Alaska
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Candice Berner
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Authorities in Alaska are investigating whether Candice Berner, a 32-year-old schoolteacher originally from Slippery Rock whose body was found in the woods of a remote Alaskan village, was the state's first recorded victim of a wolf attack.
An Alaska state trooper told Bob Berner, Ms. Berner's father, that a group of kids on ATVs had been riding alongside Ms. Berner for part of her nightly run on a rough road through the woods in the village of Chignik Lake. The kids eventually rode ahead of her, but on their trip back, they found a bloody glove in their path. They found her body off the road, badly mauled by an animal at around 6:45 p.m. Monday.
"She had teeth marks in throat," he said. "Her left arm and side both were pretty messed up."
Mr. Berner said Alaska State Trooper Daniel Blizzard told him they are "99 percent certain" that it was a wolf that attacked Ms. Berner.
Beth Ipsen, a spokeswoman for the Division of Alaska State Troopers, declined to say if state troopers were investigating whether a wolf killed Ms. Berner. She said state troopers were conducting a "death investigation," as they do with all unattended deaths. Ms. Berner's body was to be transported to Anchorage Wednesday, where an autopsy will be performed sometime today.
"It's way too early to point your finger in one way or another, and part of that is the unlikeliness of a wolf attack," Ms. Ipsen said.
If Ms. Berner's death was caused by a wolf, it will be the first fatal wolf attack ever recorded by the law enforcement agency, which was started in 1941, Ms. Ipsen said.
Wolf attacks are extremely rare and there have only been a handful of fatal wolf attacks in North America, said Mark McNay, who retired in 2007 as the wolf biologist from Alaska's Department of Fish and Game. Mr. McNay has recorded only two fatal attacks in Alaska since the early 1940s.
First Published March 11, 2010 12:00 am
