Italy captures brown bear that fatally mauled runner

ROME — Authorities in northern Italy have captured a bear that fatally mauled a runner and became the focus of a battle over what to do with Italy’s growing brown bear population.

Officials in Trento announced Tuesday that the bear, identified as Jj4, had been captured overnight.

Andrea Papi, 26, was killed while out on a mountain training run between April 5-6. The Trento provincial authorities ordered the bear killed, but an animal rights group appealed to an administrative court, which suspended the order on April 11.

Jj4 is the same Alpine brown bear that injured a father and son out walking in the region in 2020. Then too, provincial authorities ordered her killed but a court blocked the move.

She was born to two bears brought to Italy from Slovenia two decades ago as part of a European program to repopulate the brown bear population that had been dwindling but has now rebounded and is increasingly having encounters with the human population.

Papi’s family had said they didn’t want the bear culled.