California teen, 19, left with horrific injuries after being mauled by bear inside his home — as video released

Another bear attack has rocked California as a teenager was mauled in his home early Monday morning, leaving him with horrific scratches across his face.

Kevin Wood, 19, was rushed to hospital to treat his injuries from the attack in Crestline, San Bernadino. His mother, Darah, said she heard a commotion around 5:45 a.m. that morning.

Then she saw her bloodied son emerge from his room. “I see him and his face is just covered with blood,” she recalled. “I could see his lip was entirely split.”

She applied pressure to his nose to stop the bleeding. The mother didn’t initially know what happened because her son is autistic.

“He’s moderately autistic, so he’s pretty much only verbal when he wants to be,” she said. Kevin had additional scratches on his stomach that his mother viewed as she tended to him.

It’s unclear what exactly happened, but his mother believed the bear reached through Kevin’s window screen door and attacked him. The mesh window frame for his room’s window was bent.

She then took Kevin to the hospital, but found the bear had remained in the area. Darah spotted and scared the creature away by banging pots and pans. She described the animal.

“It’s very big and black, and the snout is sort of a light brown,” Wood said.

A neighbor recorded a black bear trotting in front of her home and eating out of her bird feeder with her security cameras. She said that bears are common, but that these ones seem more bold.

“It just seems a little bit different this year,” she said. “I get quite a lot of bears anyway because of my location, I’m on the rim, but these bears seem to not be so scared.”

California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials noted that bears become increasingly active in the warmer months. Wildlife officials commonly tell residents to remove any open food containers or common attractants from their property.

Cort Klopping, a CDFW official, told KTLA that they would be investigating the incident.

“Gathering DNA from the scene as well as the victim and then, once those DNA results come back, there will be, potentially, capture efforts involved to locate the bear in question,” he said.

The CDFW estimates that 49,000 to 71,000 black bears live in California.

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