Bear Attack Kills Child This is so horrifying. They say it's only the second fatal attack in local history, which is true, but then the first one was only 6 years ago.→[More:]I've never seen a bear, although I hike and a lot of my friends have encountered them here and there. Last spring or the spring before a bear around here killed a boy's dog - they had been hiking on trails I know well. Once when I was camping with a then boyfriend & three kids way up near Qualla Boundary we realized in the morning that at least one bear, possibly two, had been about 100 feet from our campsite that night, which was unnerving. The whole thing is so sad and I'm afraid there will be more of it - every day there are more bears and more people and less land.