KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Authorities cut open a slain bear and found a shoe lost by a Florida man while fighting off a bear that attacked his 8-year-old son in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The footwear was discovered in the black bear's stomach during a necropsy at the University of Tennessee Veterinary Medical Center, Smokies spokeswoman Nancy Gray said Monday.
It leaves little doubt rangers killed the right bear.
John Pala, a 43-year-old health insurance salesman from Boca Raton with no backwoods experience, literally ran out of his shoes racing to the aid of his young son Evan when the bear pounced on the boy during a day hike Aug. 11 along the popular Rainbow Falls trail.
Twice, Pala grabbed the young male bear's face, pulled its mouth apart and pushed the 86-pound animal away before Evan finally escaped.
Then Pala and Evan's 10-year-old brother Alex pelted the bear with sticks and stones until they could slowly back away and run to join Evan in a parking lot where they left their car.
Pala could hardly walk the next day because of the beating taken by his bare feet. Evan had bruises on his back, stitches in his arms and staples on his scalp, but otherwise OK. Alex was unhurt.
Rangers killed the suspected bear a few hours later in the same place where the Pala family was attacked. They shot the animal when it charged them. One of Pala's shoes was found nearby.
Pala, now home, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that rangers called him Friday to say they'd found his other shoe "inside the bear's stomach." The boys "really got a kick to hear that," he wrote.
Ewww!!!
