Finnish police shot dead a bear that killed a jogger in the first known lethal bear attack in Finland this century, officials said Thursday.
Police, assisted by hunters and a helicopter, tracked down the bear and its cub and shot them in woods outside Ruokolahti near the Russian border, about one mile from where the runner was found dead early Thursday."After this tragic incident, killing the bears was the only sensible thing to do," a police officer said.
Officer Teppo Seppanen said the cub was over one year old and would have been impossible to place in any animal refuge.
Experts have long warned that the increasing bear population in Finland would sooner or later bring human casualties.
The attack on the 43-year-old jogger came just a day before hundreds of thousands of Finns were to head for their summer cottages in the wooded inland areas and numerous islands off the coast for a three-day midsummer break.