“I thought I was going to get scalped”: 55-year-old American woman attacked by bear in front of her home

The 50-year-old is still hospitalized. A 55-year-old woman with her three cubs was attacked by a bear this Tuesday March 5 in Butler County, Pennsylvania (United States), ABC reports.

From her hospital bed, Lee Ann Gallant told American television: “She put me down and she was on top of me. I thought I was going to die,” she said through tears.

“She pushed me to the ground”

This fact happened this Tuesday night around 8:30 pm, when Lee Ann Gallante was letting her dog out of her house through the back door. Then she saw “huge” bear cubs in a nearby tree.

At that moment, the bear and her cubs approached the 55-year-old woman. The mother began attacking the victim’s dog. But Lee Ann Gallant started screaming, which got the bear’s attention. “I wasn’t going to let her eat my dog,” she insisted.

“He pushed me to the ground and my face hit the cement slab. She then grabbed the back of my head and pulled so hard that I thought I was going to scalp. She pulled so hard that she tore the skin behind my ear and I got stitches,” the victim said emotionally. Lee Ann Galante had to be rushed to the hospital with injuries to her hands, face, neck and head.

The bear euthanized, freed its cubs

The attack took the local police by surprise, as one of their officers, John Hayes, explained: “I’ve been here forty years and it’s never happened. We have never seen that,” he asserted.

The Pennsylvania Wildlife Agency found the mother bear and her three cubs in a nearby tree, police said in a report. Authorities had to euthanize the bear, but the three cubs were released into the wild after being temporarily anesthetized.