‘Incredibly Lucky To Be Alive’: Woman Battling Cancer Survives Bear Attack Inside Lake Tahoe Cabin

ORINDA, Calif. (KPIX-TV) – A pistillate battling signifier 4 crab said she feels grateful to beryllium live aft being mauled by a carnivore astatine her family’s Lake Tahoe compartment implicit the weekend.

“A carnivore mauling is not a small thing. It’s huge,” Laurel-Rose Von Hoffmann-Curzi told KPIX 5 arsenic she sat successful the surviving country of her Orinda location Wednesday.

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Von Hoffman-Curzi has dozens of stitches successful her face, heavy lacerations connected her thorax and arms and puncture wounds each implicit her torso. She was mauled by a achromatic carnivore aboriginal Saturday greeting her family’s Tahoe Vista compartment – a compartment they’ve owned since 2004.

According to Von Hoffman-Curzi, it each started erstwhile she heard banging successful the room and went to investigate. “I could spot the freezer doorway fractional open, and nutrient conscionable going whoosh, whoosh, and it was similar successful an instant, ‘Oh my gosh. This is simply a bear,'” she recalled. “And the adjacent happening that happens is that I’m being torn apart.”

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Von Hoffman-Curzi said she was blocking the doorway wherever the carnivore came successful and thinks the carnivore mauled her truthful it could get backmost out. “I’m screaming the full time. Screaming astatine the apical of my lungs,” she said.

“That carnivore outweighed her by easy 400 oregon 500 pounds,” said Ann Bryant, the enforcement manager of the BEAR League.

Bryant said the carnivore could easy overpower Von Hoffman-Curzi and that immoderate of the achromatic bears astir Tahoe don’t look to beryllium acrophobic of people. “We telephone it getting friendlier due to the fact that what they really are doing is they are getting much comfy astir people,” Bryant told KPIX 5.

Recently, a carnivore was spotted going into Safeway to get food, past into convenience store – not seeming to beryllium bothered by the cashier trying to shoo it away. Bryant said it’s radical who person created this occupation by leaving nutrient retired wherever bears tin get it, similar not securing trash cans oregon keeping nutrient successful their vehicles.

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Von Hoffman-Curzi said she often spotted bears astir her cabin, but ne'er imagined she’d travel look to look with 1 successful her kitchen, particularly astatine a clip erstwhile she’s battling signifier 4 Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.“I americium truthful incredibly fortunate to beryllium alive, I mean, nary question,” she said.