Bear attack

last updated 8 January 2015

Fallsburg, N.Y.

A 150-pound black bear this week snatched a 5-month-old baby girl out of her stroller and mauled her to death. The baby’s mother, Rachel Schwimmer, hurried her two other children, ages 2 and 4, into the Brooklyn family’s vacation cottage in the Catskills after someone shouted, “Bear!” She ran back outside to grab her sleeping baby, Esther, but the animal had taken her. “The baby was hanging from the bear’s mouth like a doll,” said witness Moshe Katz. Pincus Shaya Schwimmer, Esther’s father, was injured trying to block the bear’s path. The bear dropped the infant after rescuers yelled, threw rocks, and waved their arms, but she died of wounds to her head and neck. A police officer shot the animal dead. Bear sightings are common, Town Supervisor Steve Levine said, but the attack was a “terrible, freaky thing.”