B.C. bear that mauled three-year-old girl still at large after Mounties shoot the wrong animal

A black bear that mauled a three-year-old in Maple Ridge, B.C., is still loose, and the bear police shot was not it.

Anaiyah Lekei was outside her family’s home in the 12300 block of 240 Street on Sunday morning when the bear attacked her, Global News reported. She was airlifted to B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver and underwent surgery.

Two days later, the bear has not been found. Conservation officers are still searching a residential block where families have been told to stay indoors. When the animal is located, it is expected to be killed.

Andrea Lekei told CTV News she, her husband and their daughter were in the backyard when she heard the girl cry out. “She just started screaming, just screaming like I’ve never heard her scream before,” she said.

Her husband reached the girl first and pulled the bear off her.

“He managed to get him away just as he was about to take another bite at her neck,” Lekei told CTV. “The bear just kept coming back. He had no other choice but to get his compound bow.”

She said her husband retrieved the weapon from the garage and shot an arrow in the bear’s head, at which point it ran off.

Jordan Ferguson, an officer with the B.C. Conservation Officer Service, said the father was acting as a dad. “I think any parent put in that situation, your adrenaline goes up, and you just kind of act,” he said.

Lekei and the girl’s grandmother tried to stop the bleeding with towels, Global reported.

“She has pretty deep lacerations to the back of her neck and her head, and puncture wounds throughout her back and neck and scratches as well,” Lekei told CTV, noting her daughter is expected to make a full recovery.

“She’s a brave little warrior. I cannot believe how tough she is.”

British Columbians made 6,133 conflict calls about black bears in the first six months of 2026, provincial figures show, up 12 per cent from the same months last year. Conservation officers killed 73 bears for public safety reasons over that period, up from 67. Two were destroyed for that reason in Maple Ridge in all of 2025. The province’s predator statistics do not count attacks.

Black bears are common on the street and normally keep their distance, Lekei told CTV.

“They don’t bother us. They are easily shooed away,” she said. “They’ve never, ever, come that close to our house and up onto our patio.”

Officers responded to the attack about 11:30 a.m. and secured the scene, and conservation officers arrived after, Maple Ridge RCMP said in a news release . The bear returned to the property and the surrounding area several times, showing what the release called “a high degree of interest in the location.” At about noon, officers came into contact with the animal and fired. The bear was struck and fled into a wooded area. Global reported the shooting happened in a neighbour’s yard. By 12:40 p.m., police had closed 240 Street from 123 Avenue to 125 Avenue.

The Conservation Officer Service later told police that necropsy results showed the animal was not responsible for the attack, Maple Ridge RCMP said in a statement Monday .

“While we value our local wildlife, our officers must also act when faced with an immediate threat to public safety,” the statement said. Officers had reasonably believed it was the same bear, and the necropsy result was not available at the time. The finding does not establish the bear was harmless. The earlier release said it had shown signs of aggression.

Wildlife management is the Conservation Officer Service’s responsibility, Maple Ridge RCMP said in an email, but officers are sometimes first on scene and have to conduct an initial risk assessment. In this case, that assessment found a high degree of risk to the public, and the decision was made to fire. Asked what informed the belief that this was the bear from the attack, the detachment wrote that officers were acting on the best information they had in a dynamic and unfolding situation. It did not say who recovered the dead bear, writing that it was a question for conservation officers and that it believed they had recovered it.

Relocating a bear in a case like this is not an option, Ferguson said Sunday. “When bears exhibit this aggressive behaviour and when someone is injured, that is usually the outcome, the bear is destroyed,” he said. Most of the conservation officers stationed in the Lower Mainland were assigned to the search that night. Neighbours told Global there are several bears in the area, some of them with cubs.

A fundraiser started by Christina Bell, a Maple Ridge resident, had raised $2,723 of a $4,000 goal as of Tuesday morning. The money is meant to let both of Anaiyah’s parents take time off work while she recovers.

“They are dealing with enough,” Bell wrote on the page.

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