PENNSYLVANIA: A woman survived a mauling by a bear by repeatedly punching the animal and crawling into a bush as her Chihuahua-mix distracted the attacker.
Melinda LeBarron has broken bones, cuts and bruises and multiple bites after the attack outside her home in rural Pennsylvania on Wednesday evening, her son said. She remained hospitalized in critical condition Friday.
Her dog — fittingly named Bear — was also bitten several times and has a broken sternum and separated ribs.
“I’ll just put it this way — she’s very, very lucky to be alive,” said her son, Trent LeBarron, who described her as a tough person. “She was punching the bear and everything. Her right hand’s all swollen up from punching the bear.”
The attack began when she went outside with her dog around 6 p.m. When Bear the dog barked, Melinda LeBarron, a 51-year-old food prepper at a steakhouse restaurant, looked around to see what had startled the canine.
“The next thing she knew, she was on the ground getting slammed around,” said her son.
The black bear dragged Melinda about 80 yards (70 meters) through her yard, across a road, and into a thicket, while the dog tried to intervene, biting the black bear several times. Some of her clothes were ripped off in the process.
The attack left a trail of blood that relatives later followed.
“As she said in her own words, the bear wouldn’t show her no mercy at all,” Trent LeBarron said. “It wouldn’t stop.”
Eventually Melinda LeBarron went limp, and the bear took an interest in the dog, giving her a chance to climb into a small bush. She then threw a stick to distract the bear and finally made her way home to call a relative for help.
Bear the dog somehow got back into the home and was found whimpering beneath a bed.
“She’s stable now,” Trent LeBarron said. “She’s doing good, she’s actually doing very good. She has a long ways to go and a lot of lot of surgeries coming up.”
Before Melinda LeBarron was able to speak, she wrote on a pad to ask how her dog was doing.
“We asked her if Bear saved her life,” Trent LeBarron said. She nodded her head yes “so fast it was unreal.”
The attack occurred in a rural area outside Muncy, Pennsylvania, roughly 165 miles (265 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia.
Wildlife officials told WNEP-TV they are trying to track the bear. Game Commission spokesman Travis Lau said his agency believes it is a sow with cubs and the attack occurred after the dog ran toward the bears.
Mike Levan, Melinda LeBarron’s neighbor and landlord, whose wife called 911, said a bear sow and four cubs were seen in the neighborhood all summer.
Woman punches bear, gets help from dog to survive attack
Woman punches bear, gets help from dog to survive attack
- The attack occurred in a rural area outside Muncy, Pennsylvania, roughly 165 miles (265 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia
- The attack began when she went outside with her dog around 6 p.m.
This handout photograph released on Jan. 21, 2026, shows a view of prehistoric cave paintings in the Sulawesi island of Indonesia, which includes faded hand stencils dated to at least 67,800 years ago. (AFP Photo/Maxime Aubert/Griffith University)
- Newly dated artworks are believed to have been created by ancestors of indigenous Australians
- Discovery shows Sulawesi as one of world’s oldest centers of artistic culture, researcher says
JAKARTA: Hand stencils found in a cave in Indonesia’s Sulawesi are the world’s oldest known artworks, Indonesian and Australian archeologists have said in a new study that dates the drawings back to at least 67,800 years ago.
Sulawesi hosts some of the world’s earliest cave art, including the oldest known example of visual storytelling — a cave painting depicting human-like figures interacting with a wild pig. Found in 2019, it dates back at least 51,200 years.
On Muna, an island off the province’s southeast, researchers have discovered new artworks which are faint and partially obscured by a more recent motif on the wall. They used a new dating technique to determine their age.
The cave art is of two faded hand stencils, one at least 60,900 years old and another dating back at least 67,800 years. This makes it the oldest art to be found on cave walls, authors of the study, which was published this week, said in the journal Nature.
Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a researcher at the National Research and Innovation Agency, or BRIN, and co-author, said this hand stencil was 16,600 years older than the rock art previously documented in the Maros-Pangkep caves in Sulawesi, and about 1,100 years older than stencils found in Spain believed to have been drawn by Neanderthals.
The discovery “places Indonesia as one of the most important centers in the early history of symbolic art and modern human seafaring. This discovery is the oldest reliably dated rock art and provides direct evidence that humans have been intentionally crossing the ocean since almost 70,000 years ago,” Oktaviana said on Wednesday.
The stencils are located in Liang Metanduno, a limestone cave on Muna that has been a tourist destination known for cave paintings that are about 4,000 years old.
“This discovery demonstrates that Sulawesi is one of the oldest and most continuous centers of artistic culture in the world, with roots dating back to the earliest phases of human habitation in the region,” said Prof. Maxime Aubert of Australia, another of the study’s co-authors.
To figure out the stencils’ ages, researchers used a technique called laser-ablation uranium-series dating, which allows for the accurate dating of ocher-based rock art. The method uses a laser to collect and analyze a tiny amount of mineral crusts that had formed on top of the art.
The study also explored how and when Australia first became settled, with the researchers saying the stencil was most likely created by the ancestors of indigenous Australians.
