Family pays tribute to New Mexico man killed by bear: ‘He was a strong person’

Relatives of a New Mexico man who was fatally mauled by a bear inside his home recently say they are choosing to remember his firefighting career and zeal for peddling tamales rather than his rare, brutal manner of death.As Benjamin Halona’s sister, Gloria Halona, and her daughter, Samantha Vandever, put it, that is the least he deserved after the quiet dignity that he showed becoming a widower in February and subsequently grappling with health problems that required him to use a walker and a wheelchair to move around.“He was a really strong person,” Gloria Halona said of her brother in a telephone interview that her and Vandever granted on Monday. “And, even though he didn’t have a lot, he was happy.”The pair did not mind sharing new details about the 20 August bear attack that killed Benjamin Halona, 67, as he recovered from a devastating seizure that had drastically limited his mobility.They said Halona stayed back at his home in the Navajo Nation community of Crystal, New Mexico, while his stepson, Casey, had gone to the post office.Casey was brought into Halona’s life by his wife, Bernadine, who died six months earlier from illness. He heard Halona lock the front door, according to Gloria and Samantha.But, when Casey returned home, they said, the door was ajar, and there was a bear inside turning its nose toward him.Casey instinctively locked himself inside his room; barricaded the door there with a dresser and other heavy items; hid in a crawlspace in his closet; and used a cellphone to dial for emergency help. He also called Gloria and Samantha, who recounted driving over to him and seeing the bear outside the home.Samantha said she was driving and honked the horn at the bear at her mother’s behest. The bear fled, and a police officer shot the animal, they said. The mother and daughter then went inside the home and encountered a “horrific scene” that made it clear the bear they had seen had just killed Benjamin.The fact that Benjamin’s walker was inside his room undisturbed made them wonder if he spent his final moments hearing something at the front door and unlocking it mistakenly believing it was his stepson struggling to get inside.“It was a lot for us,” Samantha said.A Navajo Nation police department spokesperson on Monday declined to discuss Halona’s death, saying the agency had released what it could in a statement on the day of the bear attack.That statement said a bear had killed a man in Crystal, had fled into nearby woods, and was killed by police. It also extended condolences to the man’s family.Regardless, Samantha and Gloria said they had been coping as much as possible by recalling much more pleasant memories of Benjamin.He sold tamales locally that were a community favorite, they said. They said he was also fiercely proud of having served his Native American reservation as a wildland firefighter – and of the nicknames given to him by his friends and loved ones: Ponjo, Mountain Man and Tamale Man.Halona’s fandom of the Grammy-winning country singer Waylon Jennings was also a major aspect of his personality, Gloria said. She spoke about how her brother got to share a personal moment with Jennings months before the latter man’s February 2002 death.Jennings had traveled to Navajo Nation at the time to perform at a fair. Family members managed to arrange a brief meeting, which was photographed and saw Halona and Jennings sing Love of the Common People, which the crooner famously recorded.“We’re living in the love of the common people, smiles from the heart of a family man,” some that song’s lyrics say. “Daddy’s gonna buy you a dream to cling to, Mama’s gonna love you just as much as she can.”Jennings complimented Halona by telling him that he sounded better than country legend Willie Nelson, Gloria said. She added: “That was probably the happiest moment of Benjamin’s life.”Perhaps unsurprisingly, Halona’s fatal bear mauling prompted an intense community reaction.The Navajo people, for one, regard bears as sacred – and here, they had lost both Halona and a spiritual animal.There also had evidently not been a deadly bear mauling in New Mexico since 2001, according to a comprehensive list with information about ursine attacks. That 2001 case, furthermore, had been the first fatal New Mexico bear attack in a century, the Associated Press reported.Nonetheless, eight days before Halona’s death, New Mexico wildlife officials had warned of “an increase in the number of bears involved in human-bear conflict throughout [the state] in 2026”.They asked the public to avoid leaving garbage and fallen or rotten fruit out, which could draw bears into populated areas amid severe drought conditions that New Mexico was experiencing.Meanwhile, Gloria and Samantha said his survivors – among them two siblings, four children, five stepchildren, 15 grandchildren and one great-grandchild – were finding support in each other. They said they had also drawn a measure of comfort from the strong attendance at community memorials organized in Halona’s honor as well as at his funeral services on 29 August.“He endured a lot in his life – especially during his death,” Vandever remarked of her uncle. “And we’re all heartbroken that this had to happen to him.”