Florida wildlife officials have confirmed that a man and a dog found dead in Jerome, Florida, were killed by one or multiple bears, making it the first known fatal bear attack on a human in state history.
Robert Markel, 89, and his dog were killed in separate bear attacks Monday morning, with their bodies found a couple of hundred yards apart. While bears are known to attack dogs, they reportedly don’t go after people very often.
“Dogs and bears really just don’t get along. We see that throughout the state; they really don’t like each other. So we do have conflicts with dogs quite frequently. The issue with a person being not only injured but killed by a bear is extraordinarily rare,” Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Bear Management Program Coordinator Mike Orlando said, according to Miami’s WFOR-TV.
In the aftermath of the attacks, FWC has now killed three bears. DNA testing is being conducted at the University of Florida to see if they were the bears involved in the maulings.
Additional traps have been set to catch more bears if need be, since it’s FWC policy to trap and kill any bears responsible for attacks, FWC Executive Director Roger Young said, according to the Naples Daily News.
Officials presume the bears were black bears, since the state has a population of more than 4,000, and brown bears are not known to live in the state. Jerome, in Southwest Florida’s Collier County, is near the over 700,000-acre Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area.
“Based on the ecology in Florida and what we know, it was more than likely a black bear, if that was the case. Grizzly, brown bears don’t select this habitat,” FWC Public Information Officer Tyson Matthews told the Naples Daily News.
There has been one other recorded bear attack in Florida in 2025, though that took place in Marion County toward the north. The last bear attack in Collier County occurred in 2018, according to FWC data. Neither attack was fatal.
