A California woman currently fighting cancer survived a vicious bear attack inside her North Lake Tahoe vacation home last weekend, according to a report from KTVU.
Sixty-six year old Laurel-Rose Von Hoffmann-Curzi of Orinda was isolating at her family’s vacation home while she continued to battle stage 4 lymphoma.
She told the station she heard loud noises from the kitchen which woke her up at 6 a.m. She walked into the room and found a large bear by the refrigerator and was soon attacked.
"He must have come straight at me. I have only a vision of the paw. It was dark and then I'm getting torn up," Von Hoffmann-Curzi said to the news outlet.
She fought back by throwing a quilt at the animal and it eventually left when it saw her husband and son. Von Hoffmann-Curzi was treated at a local hospital after suffering deep lacerations that required stiches, along with other puncture wounds, cuts and bruises all over her body, the outlet said.
"I should be dead the way the bear swiped at my face," she said.
Von Hoffmann-Curzi said she had seen bears on her property before, however this was the first instance where once was inside her home. She added that she wanted to share her story as a warning to others.
Patrick Foy with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told KTVU that authorities have collected Von-Hoffman Curzi’s DNA to create a profile of the attacking bear and a trap has been set at her property.
"If we can identify the profile of the attacking animal that we might have trapped , we can remove it and it could be euthanized," Foy said.
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