A California woman was stalked by a black bear she named ‘Big Bastard.’ Then it killed her

It had been several days since anyone had heard from Downieville resident Patrice Miller.

Miller, 71, lived alone with two cats in a dilapidated yellow rental house near the heart of the small mountain town, across the street from the county courthouse. She mostly kept to herself, growing orchids and house plants, and got around with the aid of a walking stick, having endured multiple organ failures earlier in life.

Last November, her friend, Cassie Koch, who delivered groceries to Miller’s home, grew concerned when the elderly woman hadn’t checked in with her. She called the Sierra County Sheriff’s Office to request a welfare visit.

When a deputy arrived at Miller’s home, the first thing he noticed was her garden hose “draped across the porch steps,” spraying water “in all directions” from what looked like bite punctures. There was no answer to a knock on the front door.

The deputy turned off the water. Then he peered through a small window, sweeping his flashlight across the home’s interior.

Blood streaks marked with paw prints crisscrossed the living room floor.

He drew his gun and opened the door. The scene inside was gruesome. Miller’s body was on the kitchen floor, badly mangled by claw marks and bite wounds and partially eaten. The cabinets had been torn into and the floor was a mess of garbage and food.

The kitchen window appeared to be the point of entry. It had been broken into; its security bars had been pried off “and remained hanging by a single bolt,” according to a coroner’s report.

A survey of the premises led the deputy to surmise that a bear had found Miller in her bed and dragged her across the house. A pile of bear scat was found in the living room.

At first, Sierra County officials believed that Miller had died of natural causes and that a bear later broke into her home, ravaged her body and scavenged the place. But a full autopsy report, completed weeks later but not disseminated publicly until six months after the incident, determined that the woman had suffered crushing injuries and been mauled to death.

The case is a grim milestone for California: the first documented human fatality caused by a black bear in state history.

Some wildlife experts had anticipated a tragic outcome like this for years. The state’s black bear population is growing and the animals are increasingly pressing from the forests into neighborhoods and city centers. Reports of conflicts between bears and people appear to be as high as ever, according to state records.

But the Downieville investigation, in which authorities first mistook the victim’s cause of death and would later misidentify the culprit bear, marks a shift in officials’ understanding of California’s bears and what they’re capable of. In a conversation with the Chronicle, Capt. Patrick Foy of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Law Enforcement Division was candid:

“We’re in new territory.”

Harassed for months

“Big bastard” was the nickname Miller gave to the large, chestnut-colored bear that had stalked her home and harassed her for months.

Black bears are curious creatures and opportunistic eaters, and in their natural state they are skittish around humans. The more habituated among them in the Sierra Nevada, however, are known to pry open dumpsters or break into cars for food.

Downieville, a remote town with a population of about 100 people and two rivers running through it, is “right in the middle of where bears like to be,” said Catilin Roddy, environmental program manager for Fish and Wildlife’s North-Central region. The animals there rummage for trash, knock over backyard bird feeders and nose into people’s homes. The most bothersome ones develop reputations and earn epithets.

“When I was a kid, you never saw a bear in town,” said Miller’s friend Koch, 55, a longtime Downieville local. “Now, they’re all over, making their rounds. It’s easy pickings for them.”

Miller’s yard presented an easy means to a meal: She had cultivated a vegetable garden and compost pile and, according to Koch, wasn’t always diligent in disposing of trash — factors that officials say likely made her home a target.

Last year, one bear was becoming increasingly aggressive in its intent to enter Miller’s house, showing up almost daily. During one encounter, Miller “had physically hit (a bear) to keep it from entering her residence,” according to the coroner’s report.

“Every time I’d see her, something would be brought up about the bear trying to get into the house,” Koch said. “At first, it was like, ‘Oh, this pesky bear.’ But then she seemed scared about it.”

The state’s black bear population has grown from an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 in 1982 to upward of 65,000 as of last year, according Fish and Wildlife. About 40% of them are believed to live in the Sierra Nevada, where the abundance of human food accessible in mountain towns has upended bears’ natural ecosystem. The situation is giving rise to a strain of creatures unusually comfortable living among humans and, in turn, an uptick in dangerous confrontations. There’s a concern that bear behavior once considered extreme is becoming more common.

A draft of a new Black Bear Conservation Plan, published by Fish and Wildlife in April, shows that an average of 674 bear conflicts per year were reported to the department between 2017 and 2020, mostly involving property damage. That average jumped to 1,678 reports per year in 2021 and 2022.

Large, fearless bears seen breaking into homes and cars in the Lake Tahoe basin, thought to be the densest area of bear activity in California, have drawn national media attention for their brazen behavior and prompted the state to station a team of human-wildlife conflict biologists there to educate people on how to co-exist with bears (though the team’s funding runs out this month).

Reports of bear attacks are rare, though a small number have occurred in Tahoe in recent years. Officials interviewed for this article weren’t aware of another bear attack having occurred in Sierra County.

The bear that harassed Miller is a particularly concerning type known to officials as a “public safety bear” for its repeatedly aggressive behavior. To keep the animal at bay, Miller installed steel bars across her windows, but the bear persisted.

One warm night about two weeks before her death, Miller was awakened by one of her cats hissing at the cracked bedroom window, her friend Koch said. A meaty bear arm was through the opening, pawing to get inside. Miller pepper-sprayed the animal and blasted an airhorn before it retreated.

“Seemed like every other night the bear was trying to break into her house,” Koch said.

Last September, Miller reported the bear to Fish and Wildlife, and the department offered her a depredation permit, a last-resort option the state grants people to shoot a problem animal before it causes serious harm. She declined it, according to the department.

“​She didn’t want the bear hurt. She was a sweet person,” Koch said. “She just wanted the bear removed.”

Mistaken identity

Sierra County Sheriff Mike Fisher oversaw the investigation into Miller’s death. He has dealt with all sorts of wild-animal problems. In an incident several years ago, he said, the remains of a woman who had driven into the backcountry and died were eaten by a bear, Fisher said. But Miller’s case was different.

“I was shocked that we were dealing with this kind of thing right here in town,” Fisher said.

After Miller’s body was discovered in November, Fisher’s first call was to Fish and Wildlife, which is empowered to capture and euthanize bears that threaten public safety. A department wildlife officer arrived and gathered DNA samples from Miller’s body to establish the animal’s sex.

In the early aftermath, authorities were guided by two initial determinations: that the bear responsible for breaking into the house was male, and that it hadn’t killed Miller but had mauled her posthumously. The first conclusion was grounded in hard science; the second was a qualitative assessment by Fisher, who is also the county coroner, that would prove incorrect once a full autopsy was conducted weeks later in nearby Placer County.

Beginning the morning after Miller’s body was discovered, and for days after, Fisher received calls about a bear breaking down makeshift barricades at Miller’s house and re-entering. It was likely the same animal, he believed. County officials ultimately kept the bear out by installing a sheet of plywood over the front door and securing it with 40 screws.

After some bureaucratic back-and-forth, Fish and Wildlife granted a depredation permit to the home’s landlord, effectively allowing the sheriff and his deputies to dispatch the bear. The department also contacted a trapper with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to help capture the creature.

A large metal cage, baited with food and outfitted with a trapdoor, was placed on Miller’s property. On the second morning after it was set, authorities found a bear inside. Fisher believed it matched the description of the one that had torn through Miller’s home.

But after taking a look at the animal, a Fish and Wildlife biologist concluded that it was female. Fisher was told it would need to be released. He wasn’t satisfied with the evaluation, but officials were without the tranquilizers necessary to perform a hands-on assessment to verify the bear’s sex.

Fisher then ordered the trap seized and padlocked with the animal inside to ensure the bear wouldn’t be freed until its sex was confirmed. He also issued an ultimatum to Fish and Wildlife: examine the animal thoroughly or he’d call the local news media to document the bear’s release.

“I said, ‘We’re not releasing this bear until we know for sure,’” Fisher said.

That evening, another Fish and Wildlife biologist arrived in Downieville with the needed sedatives. The biologist examined the unconscious bear: It was male. The trapper dispatched it on the spot using a high-caliber pistol.

Mauled to death

In January, two months after Miller’s death, a full autopsy report detailing the lacerations, puncture wounds and other injuries to Miller concluded that she had been mauled to death. 

But Fisher said Fish and Wildlife did not share its findings that DNA taken from the trapped bear matched samples taken off of Miller’s body. It wasn’t until May, six months after discovering Miller’s body, that he could confirm — after obtaining the department’s DNA findings — that they’d captured and killed the right animal back in November.

Fish and Wildlife officials said they didn’t learn about the autopsy report findings until May, when word of them filtered up through the department’s law enforcement ranks. According to Morgan Kilgour, Fish and Wildlife’s regional manager for its North-Central region, the department “wasn’t withholding information from the public” about the fatal bear mauling, “we just didn’t have the documentation.”

Kilgour acknowledged that the department and Sierra County could have communicated better but rejected the notion that Fish and Wildlife was responsible for any delays in the investigation or dissemination of information. “Our team was very responsive and took this situation very seriously,” she said.

The sheriff says he is frustrated by the state’s response to Miller’s death and what he called a “breakdown in communication” with Fish and Wildlife in its aftermath. He believes the department’s bear management policies aren’t practically suited to the escalating animal behavior he’s seeing.

“I’m not looking to euthanize every bear that comes into my community,” Fisher said. “But every once in a while, we get a bear that exhibits different behavior than our town bears and it needs to be dealt with.”

Fish and Wildlife officials say that if the mauling had been correctly attributed as the cause of death from the start, their course to exterminating the bear would have been clearer, their actions swifter and more decisive. “It would have been handled completely differently logistically, more efficiently,” said Foy of Fish and Wildlife.

A debriefing on the case between Fisher and Fish and Wildlife officials occurred in May, just as news began to emerge of the autopsy report. Both Fisher and wildlife officials said the conversation was productive.

“I’m hopeful that this incident has brought to light some issues that if, God forbid, Sierra County or any other county is dealing with this, I think the response will be different moving forward,” Fisher said.

Roddy of Fish and Wildlife said it’s impossible to know whether a fatal mauling could happen again. 

“We hope it won’t, but it’s not a zero-percent possibility in any given year,” she said.

Roddy stressed that humans need to help keep bears wild through simple practices like storing trash and food appropriately but also by maintaining a healthy respect for the primal distinctions between us and them. “Bears should be afraid of people,” Roddy said. “We don’t want to be their friends, we want to keep a safe distance.”

Some, though, feel the tide may have already changed, that Miller’s death signals a frightening new era of violent bear behavior.

“I’ve lived here since 1980 and I’ve never been afraid to go outside at night, but I am now,” said Koch, the friend of Miller’s in Downieville. “I don’t leave my house at night unless I’ve got the floodlights on because I don’t know what’s out there. A lot of people in town are the same way now.”

‘Final straw’

Last month, Fisher’s office began receiving calls about a cinnamon-colored bear breaking into occupied homes in Downieville. An elderly resident had reportedly woken up from a nap and found the animal standing in his living room “staring at him.”

“That was the final straw for me,” Fisher said.

Fisher took the unprecedented step of issuing a decree declaring the bear to be a public safety threat, in effect authorizing his deputies to trap or shoot it on sight. He notified Fish and Wildlife about the declaration, he said, but didn’t wait for its approval to act.

One day soon after, the sheriff received a call that the cinnamon bear was trying to break into the middle-high school cafeteria. Deputies arrived at the school too late to catch it, but by then, had heard that it had broken into a nearby house. They pursued it on foot, tracked it down in the woods, and shot it to death with a rifle.

Reach Gregory Thomas: gthomas@sfchronicle.com. Reach Daniel Lempres: Daniel.Lempres@sfchronicle.com

June 15, 2024|Updated June 15, 2024 3:10 p.m.

Editor, Lifestyle & Outdoors

Gregory Thomas is The Chronicle’s Editor of Lifestyle and Outdoors, focusing on California activities and destinations. He also hosts the Wild West podcast, which features interviews with environmental thought leaders and adventure athletes (subscribe here). Before that, he served as Senior Editor at Outside Magazine in New Mexico where he edited news, enterprise stories, and features in print and online. He’s worked at a tech-media startup, reported for major metro newspapers, written features for national magazines, and done his share of internships. He holds a Master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley.

Criminal Justice Reporter

Daniel Lempres is a criminal justice reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. Before joining the Chronicle in 2023, he worked as a reporter for the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, where he focused on long term investigations in collaboration with outlets like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and S.F. Chronicle.

He can be reached at Daniel.Lempres@sfchronicle.com.