Family hopes for answers from inquest
Father believes son's 2005 death can be blamed on attack by wolves
Chris Purdy
The StarPhoenix
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
EDITOR'S NOTE: Contents of this story may be offensive to some readers.
PRINCE ALBERT -- The father of an Ontario engineering student killed in an animal attack while working in northern Saskatchewan hopes a coroner's inquest will finally prove wolves caused his death.
"We're hoping the truth comes out," Kim Carnegie of Oshawa, Ont., said Monday during the first day of the weeklong inquest.
"We're hoping the Saskatchewan government admits our son was killed by wolves. . . . It's hard to have closure when people are trying to lie about how your son died," he said, choking back tears.
Kenton Carnegie, 22, was last seen alive as he headed out for an afternoon walk from a work camp at the Points North Landing supply depot on Nov. 8, 2005. Two hours later, worried co-workers found him mauled to death, surrounded by wolf tracks.
There has never been a documented case of a fatal wolf attack in North America.
An expert for the coroner's office is to testify later this week that Carnegie was killed by a black bear. Another expert called by the family will testify he was killed by wolves.
It will be up to the six-member jury sitting in the inquest at a Prince Albert hotel to weigh the evidence and determine how Carnegie was killed as well as make recommendations to prevent similar deaths.
John Morrall, the lawyer representing the coroner's office, said the jury is to hear testimony today from provincial environment officials about garbage dumps in the area and how they should be managed.
Wolves were known to frequent an unfenced dump, located on Crown land near the Points North compound, before Carnegie's death.
Todd Svarckopf, a pilot for Sander Geophysics Ltd., testified he and a co-worker had to fight off two aggressive wolves with sticks on Nov. 4, four days before Carnegie's death. He thought the wolves were trying to kill them.
"They snapped their teeth constantly at us," said Svarckopf, adding he had never received work training on how to deal with animal encounters.
The following day, Carnegie, a University of Waterloo student on a work term with Sander Geophysics, asked Svarckopf to go for a walk. But the pilot believed it was too dangerous.
He said he told the restless Carnegie of his frightening encounter with the wolves and convinced him they should play hockey in the airport hangar instead.
Svarckopf said when he learned Carnegie had not returned from a walk on Nov. 8, he and others went looking for him. They followed his footprints in the snow, leading into the woods, and found his body.
"The wolves were all around us howling," said Mark Eikel, an assistant manager at Points North who helped with the search. "It was quite an eerie feeling."
Too scared to stay beside the body, Eikel waited in a pickup truck with another worker on a nearby road until an RCMP officer and coroner arrived by plane from Wollaston Lake.
Const. Al Noey testified he could see glowing eyes in the dark when he finally reached Carnegie's body, which had been dragged several metres from the spot where the other workers found him.
He said he could hear animals moving in the bush, as if they were "trying to get their kill back."
Noey said others in his group started a fire and shot their rifles and shotguns several times to keep what he thought were wolves at bay while he took photos of the scene.
He saw many canine tracks, several drag marks and blood. Carnegie's footprints suggested he tried to run, said Noey. His body lay with a pant leg snagged on a tree stump.
"The body was, like, pretty chewed up," Noey said. "The top mid-section to the thigh, it was all eaten up."
Dr. Nico Brits, the pathologist who performed the autopsy, testified Carnegie lost about 25 to 30 per cent of his body mass in the attack.
He was covered with bite and gnaw marks. Brits said multiple wounds on the body could indicate more than one animal was involved in the attack, but he could not determine if the marks were caused before or after death.
Mechanic Bob Burseth, who also aided with the search, testified he saw a pack of four wolves near the airstrip twice in the days before Carnegie's death, and the same pack was there again the day after his body was discovered.
He said he did not see bear tracks where the body was found. And he had not seen a bear in the area for at least a month.
"At that time of year it's cold," said Burseth. "There weren't any bears around, and had there been a bear around it would have been in the garbage."
http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstar...=58cd1fae-c3dc-42a0-8ca3-065ca0f4992f&k=20496
Father believes son's 2005 death can be blamed on attack by wolves
Chris Purdy
The StarPhoenix
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
EDITOR'S NOTE: Contents of this story may be offensive to some readers.
PRINCE ALBERT -- The father of an Ontario engineering student killed in an animal attack while working in northern Saskatchewan hopes a coroner's inquest will finally prove wolves caused his death.
"We're hoping the truth comes out," Kim Carnegie of Oshawa, Ont., said Monday during the first day of the weeklong inquest.
"We're hoping the Saskatchewan government admits our son was killed by wolves. . . . It's hard to have closure when people are trying to lie about how your son died," he said, choking back tears.
Kenton Carnegie, 22, was last seen alive as he headed out for an afternoon walk from a work camp at the Points North Landing supply depot on Nov. 8, 2005. Two hours later, worried co-workers found him mauled to death, surrounded by wolf tracks.
There has never been a documented case of a fatal wolf attack in North America.
An expert for the coroner's office is to testify later this week that Carnegie was killed by a black bear. Another expert called by the family will testify he was killed by wolves.
It will be up to the six-member jury sitting in the inquest at a Prince Albert hotel to weigh the evidence and determine how Carnegie was killed as well as make recommendations to prevent similar deaths.
John Morrall, the lawyer representing the coroner's office, said the jury is to hear testimony today from provincial environment officials about garbage dumps in the area and how they should be managed.
Wolves were known to frequent an unfenced dump, located on Crown land near the Points North compound, before Carnegie's death.
Todd Svarckopf, a pilot for Sander Geophysics Ltd., testified he and a co-worker had to fight off two aggressive wolves with sticks on Nov. 4, four days before Carnegie's death. He thought the wolves were trying to kill them.
"They snapped their teeth constantly at us," said Svarckopf, adding he had never received work training on how to deal with animal encounters.
The following day, Carnegie, a University of Waterloo student on a work term with Sander Geophysics, asked Svarckopf to go for a walk. But the pilot believed it was too dangerous.
He said he told the restless Carnegie of his frightening encounter with the wolves and convinced him they should play hockey in the airport hangar instead.
Svarckopf said when he learned Carnegie had not returned from a walk on Nov. 8, he and others went looking for him. They followed his footprints in the snow, leading into the woods, and found his body.
"The wolves were all around us howling," said Mark Eikel, an assistant manager at Points North who helped with the search. "It was quite an eerie feeling."
Too scared to stay beside the body, Eikel waited in a pickup truck with another worker on a nearby road until an RCMP officer and coroner arrived by plane from Wollaston Lake.
Const. Al Noey testified he could see glowing eyes in the dark when he finally reached Carnegie's body, which had been dragged several metres from the spot where the other workers found him.
He said he could hear animals moving in the bush, as if they were "trying to get their kill back."
Noey said others in his group started a fire and shot their rifles and shotguns several times to keep what he thought were wolves at bay while he took photos of the scene.
He saw many canine tracks, several drag marks and blood. Carnegie's footprints suggested he tried to run, said Noey. His body lay with a pant leg snagged on a tree stump.
"The body was, like, pretty chewed up," Noey said. "The top mid-section to the thigh, it was all eaten up."
Dr. Nico Brits, the pathologist who performed the autopsy, testified Carnegie lost about 25 to 30 per cent of his body mass in the attack.
He was covered with bite and gnaw marks. Brits said multiple wounds on the body could indicate more than one animal was involved in the attack, but he could not determine if the marks were caused before or after death.
Mechanic Bob Burseth, who also aided with the search, testified he saw a pack of four wolves near the airstrip twice in the days before Carnegie's death, and the same pack was there again the day after his body was discovered.
He said he did not see bear tracks where the body was found. And he had not seen a bear in the area for at least a month.
"At that time of year it's cold," said Burseth. "There weren't any bears around, and had there been a bear around it would have been in the garbage."
http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstar...=58cd1fae-c3dc-42a0-8ca3-065ca0f4992f&k=20496
