Mystery in the Smokies: Did a bear kill a man?

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, Tenn. (WVLT) The national park service put down a bear this past weekend after it was found scavenging around a man's body. Rich Mountain road remains closed while investigators try and figure out just how William Lee Hill Jr. died.

When investigators found him his body had been scavenged by a bear.

"The entire time we were working the bear stayed in the area continuing to show aggression to our searchers and other employees,"

Julena Campbell with the National Park Service said.

She said that's why they chose to euthanize the black bear, but the process took a little longer than expected. Initially they put a GPS tracker on the bear until they could prove it had eaten part of Hill. Wildlife experts shot and killed the bear 5 days later, after tracking it through the park.

"We have roughly 1600 bears in the Smokies, and each one is certainly valuable",

Campbell said.

"It's not a decision that we make lightly. That's why we didn't want to make that decision late at night spur of the moment in this particular case."

Euthanizing the bear involves putting the bear down with one clean shot. Wildlife experts say that's the quickest and least painful way.

"For large animals including wildlife, horses or cows often times its a shot to the brain to end that animals life,"

Campbell said.

She said black bear attacks are rare but the do happen. The last time a bear attacked a human was back in May of 2016, the last time a bear killed someone in the park was 2000.

"We spend a lot of time trying to educate folks so that we can avoid human and bear interactions here in the park,"

Campbell said.

"We don't know in this case whether it was a bear attack or not."

She said that's the biggest questions investigators are still trying to answer.

"We are hoping to get an autopsy to hopefully fill in those blanks, but its possible we will never know,"

Campbell said.

"We are also doing a necropsy on the bear which may or may not give us any information. At this point it will probably just confirm that he was scavenging on the remains, not give us any information if it was an attack or not."

The medical examiners office says a full autopsy of Hill could take up to 90 days.