Teenager called police in panic after rabid bear threw her to her death

A 19-year-old woman is dead after she was attacked by a bear and pushed off a cliff while hiking with her boyfriend.

The victim, identified by the Daily Mail when Maria Diana was hiking on the Jepii Mici trail in the Bucegi Mountains in Romania at the time of the incident on Tuesday, July 9.

Both the woman and her boyfriend tried to contact the local emergency call center during the attack, RomaniaJournal.ro reported.

The first call allegedly came from her boyfriend.

He informed Salvamont Prahova, a local search and rescue organization, that they were being chased by a bear and gave the dispatcher their location, according to RomaniaJournal.ro.

The outlet said that his girlfriend was also on the phone with Salvamont Prahova around the same time, but that call was interrupted by the attack.

“She was terribly scared… you could see it, she was screaming: ‘The bear is coming closer!'” said Dan Banu, director of Salvamont Prahova.

“Everything happened live, the 112 emergency dispatcher was on the phone and the young man was shouting that they were being attacked by a bear and that it had taken the girl. It was something terrible! He told us that the bear grabbed the girl by one leg and dragged her behind him and that at some point he could no longer see what he was doing to her. The bear pulled her off the path and threw her 120 meters into the valley,” Banu continued.

The young woman died at the scene of the accident.

Rescue workers from Salvamont Prahova arrived and tried to recover the body, but they were unsuccessful as the wild animal remained nearby.

“We have been informed that a tourist was attacked by a bear on the Jepii Mici hiking trail near Valea Spumoasa. A rescue team from Salvamont Prahova went to the area and recently abseiled down into the valley where they found the victim, who was unfortunately dead. The rescue operation is extremely difficult due to the rugged terrain and the constant presence of the bear, which stays about 10-15 m away from the mountain rescuers,” the organization said on Tuesday.

The bear was killed after attacking rescuers.

“It was terrible! We have not experienced such a serious situation in the last 10-15 years,” a spokesman for Salvamont Prahova told Digi24.ro, according to RomaniaJournal.ro.

“I believe that it is our duty to protect nature, to preserve biodiversity, but above all to protect people’s lives, because nothing is above human life,” said Environment Minister Mircea Fechet after expressing his condolences to Diana’s family.

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According to EuroNews.com, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said during a press conference at the NATO summit in Washington on Wednesday, July 10: “We cannot protect animals at the expense of humans.”

Romania is home to the largest population of European brown bears. The wild animals can reach speeds of up to 48 km/h and grow up to 2.10 m tall.