Student might be first North American killed by wolves

Chris Purdy, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, October 30, 2007

PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. -- A coroner's inquest began yesterday to determine whether the death of an Ontario student in northern Saskatchewan two years ago is the first documented case of a fatal wolf attack in North America.

"We're hoping the truth comes out," Kim Carnegie of Oshawa said during the first day of the week-long inquest into his son's death.

"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.

Engineering student 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.

Points North Landing is located 850 kilometres north of Saskatoon.

It will be up to the six-member jury sitting in the inquest at a Prince Albert hotel to come to a conclusion and make recommendations to prevent similar deaths.

Prince Albert is 140 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.

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 said he thought the wolves were trying to kill them.

"They snapped their teeth constantly at us," said Svarckopf.

Svarckopf said when he learned Carnegie, a University of Waterloo student on a work term with Sander Geophysics, 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 with the body, Eikel waited in a pickup truck with another worker on a nearby road until an RCMP officer and coroner arrived.

RCMP 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."

"The body was, like, pretty chewed up," Noey said.

"The top midsection to the thigh -- it was all eaten up."

Dr. Nico Brits, the pathologist who performed the autopsy, testified Carnegie had lost about 25 to 30 per cent of his body mass in the attack.