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Florida Boy Survives Mauling

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The Associated Press

Published: August 13, 2008

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - An 8-year-old Florida boy had just scrambled up a creek embankment ahead of his father and older brother during a day hike in Great Smoky Mountains National Park when he confronted an 86-pound male black bear.

"The bear was staring at me," Evan Pala of Boca Raton said Tuesday. "Then he just stood up on his hind legs and jumped on me. Before he even got me I called, 'Bear!'"

The bear mauled Evan on Monday evening, grabbing the boy with his mouth and tossing him about like a rag doll in only the eighth bear attack on a visitor to the Great Smokies in the past decade.

John Pala, a 43-year-old health insurance salesman with no backwoods experience, twice pulled the bear off his son before he and Evan's 10-year-old brother, Alex, pummeled it with rocks and sticks, then ran for safety.
Park rangers caught a young bear soon afterward in the same area and killed it when it charged them. Park spokeswoman Nancy Gray said rangers were sure it was the same bear.

Evan and his father, who received minor cuts on his right hand and bruises on his feet when he lost his shoes in the melee, were released from a local hospital early Tuesday.

"To see my little brother bleeding ... was scary," Alex said. "I should have seen that big bear coming."

Park officials said the attack along the popular Rainbow Falls trail was unprovoked.

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