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A black bear kept by exotic animal owner Sam Mazzola mauled 24-year-old caretaker Brent Kandra on Aug. 19, 2010, at Mazzola's property in Columbia Station, in Lorain County southwest of Cleveland, and Kandra died the next morning at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland.

Mazzola made the call for help himself. Kandra, of Elyria, was flown by medical helicopter to the Cleveland hospital after the bear, out of its cage for a routine feeding, turned on him, Lorain County Sheriff's Capt. James Drozdowski said at the time. Mazzola drove the animal back into the cage with a fire extinguisher. "We don't know whether something startled the bear or what prompted the bear to get aggressive with the caretaker," Drozdowski said, according to The Associated Press. "We do know that it got aggressive with the caretaker and mauled him severely." A rescue squad also took Mazzola to a hospital that night for a medical problem the sheriff's office said did not come from any injury.

The coroner's office in Cleveland gave a tentative cause of death of sharp and blunt injuries consistent with a bear attack. Kandra's mother, Deirdre Herbert, later told Fox 8 News that the coroner described more than 600 wounds, three broken ribs, a punctured left ventricle, a crushed spleen, a crushed left kidney and a lacerated lung. The bear was euthanized on Aug. 21 at the family's request.

Mazzola had drawn national attention in 2006, when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals campaigned against the bear wrestling matches he staged at a Cleveland outdoor show and the U.S. Department of Agriculture revoked his license to exhibit animals. He kept a state permit to hold the animals on his property, which the sheriff's office said contained roughly seven to nine bears, about 20 wolves and possibly a lion and three or four tigers. He was on probation at the time of the attack for illegally selling and transporting exotic animals, the AP reported. Officials said the bear that killed Kandra was not one he had used for wrestling.

No homicide charge was ever brought. Kandra's death was ruled a workplace accident, and Lorain County authorities said too many questions were unanswered to proceed, despite PETA's request that Prosecutor Dennis Will pursue a reckless homicide count. In October 2010, Mazzola was charged with a misdemeanor for failing to keep records of the animals he owned. The Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation found separately that his coverage had lapsed in late 2005, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it could not immediately establish whether Kandra was an employee or a friend who helped out for cash.

Mazzola was found dead at the Columbia Station property in July 2011, and the coroner ruled it an accidental asphyxiation. The records charge ended with him. A Lorain County Sheriff's Office report released in March 2012 concluded that Kandra was outside the cage and was feeding the bear when it attacked, not inside and playing with it as Mazzola had said, and that Mazzola gave conflicting accounts to witnesses and investigators and at first identified the wrong animal. "I knew, a mother's instinct," Herbert said of the report, "that this was not the truth."

Ohio placed almost no restrictions on private ownership of dangerous wild animals when Kandra was killed. That changed after dozens of lions, tigers and bears were turned loose from a private collection near Zanesville in October 2011. Gov. John Kasich signed Senate Bill 310 into law on June 5, 2012, requiring owners to hold permits by Jan. 1, 2014.