Father Forced to Listen on Phone as Bear Killed His Daughter in Front of His Grandson

A Canadian mother mauled to death by a bear in front of her son was on the phone to her father the moment she was attacked.

Stephanie Blais, 44, was killed by a black bear on Thursday outside her family cabin at McKie Lake in Saskatchewan, CKOM reported.

Her dad Hubert told the site he heard his daughter die.

"Stephanie and I were talking over her satellite phone," he said. "She called me to tell me that the waterline hadn't been working and that her husband had fixed it. She then told her son, Eli, to run inside and grab an antenna."

Those were his daughter's last words; he described then hearing a distorted gurgling sound.

"I stayed on the line for a few minutes before I hung up and tried calling again," he said. "The sounds were very disturbing. An attack crossed my mind but attacks are one in a million."

"I waited, and I stayed on the line two minutes, and I called her name and I said, 'Hello,' and I got no response," he said, per Saskatoon News.

"So then I called back and let it ring four minutes later, and I got no response. And seven minutes later Curtis called me [and said] that the bear had attacked Stephanie, he pepper-sprayed the bear, shot the bear twice, he attended to Stephanie and gave her CPR, but by that time she had no pulse."

"The bear wouldn't let go so he shot the bear until it let go," he said.

Their nine-year-old son witnessed the attack from inside the cabin.

The boy's heartbroken grandfather said bears were a common sight but they were never aggressive; the family never provoked them and were careful to never leave any food out.

"Stephanie would have been in the bears' sight," he said. "She had her back turned. She didn't see it."

Conservation officers later trapped the bear, and deduced it had not attacked out of hunger, as its stomach was full of blueberries.

"It could have been so much worse," her father said. "The children could have been near her at the time of the attack."

A GoFundMe to raise money for the family, which also includes two-year-old daughter Uma, has already raised $47k.

It claimed the cabin had been in the family for 35 years, and that they were "wilderness and bear trained and experienced."

"The investigation after showed this was an unprovoked and surprise predatory attack by an old male bear," the organizer wrote. "The area around the cabin was meticulous and there was nothing that attracted or provoked the bear to attack."

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