FALLSBURG, N.Y. — Five-month-old Ester Schwimmer was nestled in her carriage for an afternoon nap outside her family's Catskills bungalow when screams rang out.
"Bear! bear! bear!" witnesses yelled Monday shortly before a black bear snatched Ester from her stroller and dragged her into the woods as her mother brought her two other children to safety. Residents desperately hurled rocks and chased the 155-pound bear as it ran away.
The young bear eventually dropped the infant, but she had severe head and neck injuries and was pronounced dead at Ellenville Hospital, said Fallsburg Police Chief Brent Lawrence.
A police officer shot and killed the bear after hunting it down through the woods.
"It may be the first season that it may have been on its own, and it may very well have perceived this infant as a food source," Lawrence said.
The death stunned visitors at the Catskills resort community and baffled wildlife experts who say black bears rarely attack humans. The American Bear Association says only 40 deaths in all of North America were caused by black bears in the last century.
"In all my many years, 34 summers, we've had them eat birdseed, get into trouble eating dog food in people's yards, but black bears are just not noted for attacking humans," said Ward Stone, state wildlife pathologist.
Ester was sleeping in her carriage by the porch of the bungalow, near her mother and two siblings at around 2 p.m. when the attack occurred. After hearing the screams, the mother shuttled her 4- and 2-year-old children inside, Lawrence said. Seconds later, when she came outside again, the infant was gone.
Witnesses reported seeing the bear with the baby in its mouth as it ambled into dense woods 20 feet from the bungalow.
Isaac Abraham, an Orthodox Jewish community leader from Brooklyn, said people desperately tried to save the girl. "People started chasing the bear, throwing rocks at it," he said.
Department of Environmental Conservation and police officers pursued the bear into the woods, Lawrence said. Fallsburg officer David Decker shot it once.
"It was just standing there. It wasn't scared," Decker said. "As I walked toward the bear, the bear climbed up a tree. And that's when I shot the bear."
Initial tests showed the male bear wasn't rabid. Contents in its stomach included small plastic bags and fruit labels, showing it had been around people, Stone said.
Black bears are common in that area of the Catskills, Lawrence said. Fallsburg police get up to a dozen reports weekly of bears pawing through garbage cans or bird feeders, he said.
The area is about 70 miles northwest of New York City, in the heart of the once-booming Borscht Belt.
Big hotels and bungalow developments used to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors each summer, many of them Jewish families from New York City. Some old resorts and scattered bungalow colonies still remain. The colony where the baby's family was staying is frequented by members of the Satmar Hasidic community.
Even now, the town swells from a year-round population of about 13,000 to 60,000 in the summer, Lawrence said.
But many campers were cutting short their stays and heading home after the attack.
"Everybody's paranoid," vacationer Toby Tessler said Monday night.
Ester, whose family lives in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, was buried Monday night, in accordance with Jewish tradition for quick burials.
On the Net: www.americanbear.org/blackbearfacts.htm