In this video, Wendi Yohman describes the brown bear attack that injured a fellow searcher Wednesday near Eagle River. Yohman was part of a small group looking for her cousin, Michael Soltis, who had been missing since Monday.
Yohman said the searchers were traveling in groups of three and she was walking down a trail when the bear appeared.
"Paul, the guy who got attacked, said we have to stay together so he came with me," Yohman said.
Officials have not publicly named the searcher she was traveling with. He has been hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
"I was in front, looking left to right, going down this trail … (I) could hear noise to the left," Yohman said.
"I look and this brown bear comes lunging out of the woods and I was in front and Paul came running in front of me and got attacked," she said. "We were screaming, trying to get all the other searchers."
"The bear got him and we were screaming and we thought he (the bear) was done," Yohman said. "Paul was crawling and the bear came back again. When he finally left, we were asking Paul if he was OK. And he said no."
"It's protecting something," Yohman said. "The bear is not acting normal."
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