Bear swats Sparta toddler

SPARTA - A black bear swatted a 2-year-old boy outside his family's home Tuesday afternoon, police said.

Mark Tregidgo suffered a bump to the head but was otherwise uninjured in the 1:19 p.m. incident, Police Sgt. Russell Smith said.

The 150-pound, 4-year-old female bruin was shot and killed by police shortly afterward, Smith said. The frightening incident, although extremely rare, is expected to strengthen calls for a statewide bear hunt.

My family lives in the next town over (About 6 Miles) and this is what happens when New York pushes the liberals out.

They're building houses 100 yards from bear dens and then apply their liberal ways. No hunting, no camp fires, no this and no that etc.. I was there Thanksgiving and a Black bear walked 3 feet from the back door looking for food.

These idiots don't even allow plastic yard bags for leaves anymore - they have to be paper !

You are correct.

These urbanites, nourished on Walt Disney, anti-gun propaganda and the PETA loons, move out of an area which their wacko political ideas and equally wacko politicians have made unlivable, and then proceed to repeat the same idiotic errors where they move to.

Read "Gangs of New York". In the 1800's and early 1900's New York City was far more violent than any cowtown out west. There were pitched battles with the cops, with civilians and between gangster clubs. The cops couldn't stop it because the Democratic Tammany Hall politicians NEEDED and USED these thugs at the voting
booths, and got them released as quickly as they were arrested. THEN, when they finally realized things had gotten out of hand about 1911, they enacted the idiotic Sullivan Law which disarmed both law-abiding citizens and thugs. But it was only when the crooked politicians stopped freeing arrested hoodlums that things got under control.

The same kind of mindless liberal Democratic anti-gun, anti-hunting philosophy pervades urban areas today.

This email tale, circulating constantly in one form or another since November 2001, seems to grow taller year by year. Ironically, the first two snapshots — the ones showing the hunter posing next to the carcass of an incredibly large bear — are authentic. We know where and when they were taken, and by whom. The origin of the third photo purporting to show the remains of the behemoth's last victim is unknown. It was attached to the already-circulating email by an anonymous prankster in late 2002. In real life, the big grizzly measured 10' 6" from nose to tail and weighed in at an estimated 1,000 to 1,200 pounds — unusually large for the vicinity, says the USDA Forest Service, but not quite a world record, nor even an Alaskan record. It was killed on October 14, 2001 by U.S. Air Force Airman Theodore Winnen on Hinchinbrook Island, Prince William Sound. The photos were taken by his hunting partner, Staff Sgt. James Urban. Both were stationed at the nearby Eielson Air Force Base at the time. Though the bear was within 10 yards of the hunters' position and moving towards them when he fired the first shot, Winnen says, it did not charge them, contrary to what the email claims. "I don't know if the wind was in our favor or what," he told the Anchorage Daily News. "We were dressed in camouflage. He might not have seen us." Winnen's weapon was a 338-caliber Winchester Magnum, not a 7mm semi-automatic as alleged. The first bullet pierced the bear's brain but left it standing; five more in the chest finally brought it down. Was the bear a man-eater, as claimed in the email? No, says the Forest Service, there is no evidence of that. When asked by the Anchorage Daily News to comment on the horrific image of what appears to be a partially-eaten human victim, spokesman Ray Massey admitted he hadn't even looked at it. "I didn't want to see a photo of the body," he said. "I know it's bogus."

"I'm upset about it. I'm devastated," Tregidgo said. "It didn't harm my son," she said of the dead bear. "It was just curious." She said she appreciated the quick police response. "I just wish it could've gone a different way," she said.

And we wonder why we have a crime problem in our society.

The bear stepped out of the line and then began to know that kids are not dangerous and can be killed or abused. It is that simple, and they have to be killed once they know.

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