14 DAY TRIAL // A 12-year-old girl from Michigan has survived a bear attack with severe wounds. Abby Wetherell describes being mauled while jogging in Cadillac, Michigan.
According to a report by ABC News, the mauling took place near her grandparents' home last week.
She needed 100 stitches and she was airlifted to a hospital after her encounter with the black bear.
She was running on a path at around 9 p.m. on Thursday when the bear charged her, and she describes being attacked twice.
"I was thinking, I shouldn't have went for this jog. I was thinking, this is it, I am a goner," Abby recalls her despair after the first incident.
"I see this bear. Oh, my gosh. I start running the way I was coming from. [...] All of a sudden, the bear stopped me and put me down on ground, scraping me and clawing me," she says.
After being thrown to the ground the animal backed away and she tried to run away, but it came back for her. She tried to calm it down but she did not succeed, so she played dead.
"So I was, like, petting it. I don't know where that came from. But, I just thought maybe if I petted it, it would like me. [...] Well, that did not work so, then it just got me again.
"And then I heard that you should play dead. So that's what I did. [...] And then it kind of went away and then it looked back and then it just took off," she remembers.
She was able to run back to her grandparents' house and she was met by her dad, who was shocked to see her with gashes and bite marks on her thighs and back as well as bruising and cuts on her face.
"I didn't believe it was a bear attack until I saw the claw marks and the bruises and it was horrible," Chris Wetherell says.
She was treated at Munson Medical Center in Traverse City, Michigan and she required two hours of surgery.