New Jersey sees its first fatal bear attack in over 160 years.

A black bear encounter in New Jersey has turned fatal. On Monday, September 21st, Darsh Patel, a Rutgers University senior, was hiking with four of his friends in the Apshawa Preserve, part of the Passaic County Park System in West Milford. They encountered a black bear, a common animal not only in West Milford, but in all of New Jersey when it began to follow them. The group became frightened and ran away from the bear, splitting up in the process.

The other four hikers eventually found one another, but they could not find Patel, 22, and at that point contacted the authorities. Two hours later, Patel’s body was found with the bear, a 300 pound male, still circling him. Even after law enforcement officers threw sticks and stones at the beast and made lots of noise, something that usually scares black bears off, it continued to act aggressively and was subsequently euthanized with two rifle shots, the first one to its shoulder, and the second and fatal shot to its jaw. Attacks like this one are extremely rare, according to NJ.com, being one in a million.

The five hikers had been warned by two hikers that they had crossed paths with that a black bear had been following them. But when the hikers first saw the bear, they even took photos of it prior to the attack. According to test results done on the dead bear on, released on October 7th, the bear had human blood on its claw’s, along with parts of Patel and his clothing in its mouth and stomach. It was also announced that there was no evidence of the bear being rabid, malnourished, or diseased in any way.

Rutgers University mourned Patel as their second student to pass away in just one week. After the alcohol-related death of 19 year old sophomore Caitlyn Kovacs, there was already an outpouring of grief from everyone associated with the university.

Patel was a senior in the School of Arts and Sciences. He majored in information technology and informatics, and he lived in Edison, New Jersey. The autopsy that will reveal his official cause of death has yet to be completed.

The last time someone in New Jersey was killed by a bear was in 1852; however there is no additional information to this death.