The son of the man attacked by a wolf in a tiny community in northern B.C. last week is sharing details of the rescue and how they finally managed to scare off the animal.
Frank Russ said the wolf lunged at his father, Stanley Russ, without provocation outside his home in Port Edward, near Prince Rupert, on Friday evening.
“We heard somebody screaming outside, and the first thing we heard was, ‘Help, I’m being attacked by a wolf!’ so we ran over to help,” Russ told Global News.
“He was just a few feet from the door.”
Wolves are relatively common in the area, but attacks on humans are not.
“It’s certainly very, very rare that a wolf would attack a person,” said Insp. Cam Schley with the BC Conservation Officer Service.
“Prior to Friday, there have only been two documented wolf attacks on a human in the past 20 years.”
Once he saw that his father was bleeding, Russ said he immediately started looking around for a weapon.
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“I just grabbed whatever I could to throw at it. The neighbour hit the panic button on her van, which scared it off,” he said.
Stanley Russ, who is in his 70s, suffered severe injuries to his lower body, and he’ll need a skin graft.
He was airlifted to Vancouver on Monday after emergency surgery in Prince Rupert, and will be there for the next couple of weeks.
“I just cried and cried and cried,” said daughter Denise Russ. “We lost our mom two years ago, so my dad’s all we have left.”
A lone wolf, similar in appearance to the one from the attack, was captured near the community on Monday and killed by conservation officers. A necropsy is scheduled for Wednesday.
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