As a spokesman for the authorities said on Saturday, the attacked person first shot the air twice with a pistol to scare the animal away. When the bear approached the man to within a meter, he fired ten shots – the last one was fatal.
The incident happened on Friday in the municipality of Sucany, around 175 kilometers north-east of Bratislava. According to the spokesman for the authorities, the pistol was legally purchased and registered.
Another incident occurred on Saturday near Liptovsky Hradok in northern Slovakia. After the bear attack, the man who was attacked in a forest was able to drag himself to a street where he was discovered by a bus driver. He was taken to the hospital with abrasions on his shoulder and an open injury on his lower leg, a spokeswoman for the rescue services said, according to the TASR news agency.
According to zoologists, there are more than 1,000 brown bears in Slovakia. The species is particularly strictly protected due to its classification in the EU’s Fauna-Flora-Habitat Directive. Slovakia has almost five and a half million inhabitants.
Source: Nachrichten
