Richard Jessee says he was riding his ATV with a trailer attached to it to it in Nome last week when he says the bear 'came out of nowhere', picked it up like 'a toy' and tossed it
The Alaska man who says he was stalked by a bear in the wilderness and rescued by the Coast Guard after scrawling 'SOS' on the roof of his shack.
Richard Jessee says he was riding his ATV with a trailer attached to it to it in Nome last week when he says the bear 'came out of nowhere', picked it up like 'a toy' and tossed it.
He was on his way to mine for gold in the region, as he does every summer.
He claims that the ATV sank in the river, taking his cell phone with it, leaving him alone in the wilderness to fight off the bear.
He fired a shot from his pistol to scare the bear then escaped to his cabin where for four days, he cowered while the bear 'stalked' him.
He got the roof to make a plywood SOS sign which, miraculously, the Coast Guard noticed during an atypical pilot mission on July 16.
They took him to the hospital, where he was treated for minor injuries, then was released.
Jessee told The Nome Nugget that he was still in shock over the entire ordeal. He says the bear tried 'for days' to get into the cabin but couldn't, even though he didn't have a door.
Coast Guard chpper spotted the man standing near a shack with the words 'SOS' and 'help me' scrawled on its tin roof.
A Coast Guard crew en route to Nome, Alaska on Friday spotted a man in a remote mining camp 40 miles from the city (pictured) waving both of his arms in a plea for help
'There was no doubt about it: the bear was trying to get into my cabin. I don’t know why it was so aggressive. Maybe it had cubs nearby,' he said.
Lieutenant Commander Jared Carbajal was piloting a helicopter for a mission near Nome
