BBC

A grizzly bear that dragged a woman from her tent and killed her in Montana has been shot dead.

Leah Lokan, a 65-year-old nurse from California, was on a mountain biking trip with two friends when the 400lb (181kg) bear attacked their camp in the early hours of Tuesday.

Officials hunted the animal for three days, setting traps in the hope of luring it in.

Staff wearing night-vision goggles shot the bear as it raided a chicken coop.

They had laid a baited trap near the coop, about 2 miles (3 km) from Ovando, the small town where the attack happened.

Ms Lokan and her friends were camping behind the town's post office when she was attacked at around 4am.

She was said to be a long distance cycling enthusiast, with a "passion for life that was out of the ordinary".

The bear first approached the campers at around 03:00 local time (09:00 GMT), but initially ran away.

Ms Lokan and her two companions, who were staying in a separate tent, then removed food from their tents and secured them before going back to sleep. But the bear returned shortly afterwards, leading to the fatal attack.

Wildlife officials say they are sure the dead bear is the perpetrator of the attack. They will compare the shot bear's DNA with traces recovered from the scene of the attack to verify it is the same one.

Bears that attack people are not always killed if their attack results from a surprise encounter, or if the bear was defending its young.

But local officials said that the bear involved in Ms Lokan's death was considered a public safety threat because of the nature of the attack.