The rifle used to kill a polar bear which mauled an Eton schoolboy to death failed to fire four times, investigators revealed on Sunday night.
The news paints a dramatic picture of expedition leader Mike Reid’s heroic attempts to save Horatio Chapple, 17, who was attacked while sleeping in his tent on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
Reid, who himself suffered serious injuries, tried to kill the bear but the first four bullets simply fell out of the magazine when he pulled the trigger.
As the animal rampaged among the five tents occupied by 11 pupils and two leaders for several minutes, frantic teenagers threw rocks at it in an effort to save themselves.
Then, despite his own terrible injuries, Reid managed to reload the rifle, march up to the snarling creature and Ð not even knowing whether the gun would work this time - shoot it in the head at short range.
The animal was eight stone underweight and had an almost empty stomach, it was revealed last night.
Police have sent the “old Mauser” rifle to Oslo for tests to discover whether the British School Expedition Service had taken adequate precautions in case of an attack.
The chilling details emerged as the victim’s parents sought answers to why a string of safety measures failed or were not in place for the expedition.
The party were camping in an area where polar bears had been seen in recent weeks at a time when the animals are short of food.
Experts recommend using look-outs, trained guard dogs and preferably installing two trip wires attached to explosive flares to scare off bears.
But the Norwegian police investigation revealed yesterday that no-one was keeping watch at the camp when the bear approached at 7.30am on Friday.
A spokesman for the governor of Svalbard said: “It is now clear that the bear had entered the tent camp unnoticed. It seems that the trip wire has not been detonated.”
Asked whether anyone was keeping watch, she said: “As far as I know, everybody was in the tents.”
The bear poked his head into the tent where Horatio and his friend Patrick Flinders were sleeping and began to bite and claw at them as they desperately tried to defend themselves.
Alerted by their screams, Reid and Andy Ruck, who were running the expedition on behalf of the BSES, rushed to the scene and were themselves slashed and bitten. Arald Lyssand, a Norwegian government investigator, said Reid picked up a gun with four cartridges in it, but “he loaded it, and pulled the trigger, each time nothing”. Ruck tried to light a flare to frighten the bear off, but this too failed to spark.
So the bear continued its rampage, injuring another member of the party, Scott Bennell-Smith.
One of the other students picked up the rifle and tried to fire it, but realised it was empty. It was then that Reid summoned all his remaining strength to pick up a cartridge from the ground and shoot the animal.
Horatio’s father David, 49, an orthopaedic surgeon, and mother Olivia, 46, a GP, from Bishopstone, near Salisbury in Wiltshire, are in Tromso to formally identify their son’s body which has been transported back to mainland Norway.
The couple, who were travelling with Horatio’s younger brothers Titus and Magnus, were too upset to comment on Sunday.
But a source close to the family said on Sunday: “They are still not fully in the picture as to what happened and have many questions as to whether enough was done to protect their son’s life.”
Lyssand said: “The routines of the British company have to be looked into.”
Ruck, 27, from Edinburgh, and Reid, 29, from London Ð were still in intensive care on Sunday. Scott and Patrick, were sent by air ambulances to their homes in Britain on Sunday. Scott’s father Peter Bennell-Smith said: “Friday was without doubt the worst day of my life and it will never leave me to think how close Scott came to being killed that day.”
He said Scott suffered a fractured jaw, head injuries and lost some teeth in the attack.
A spokesman for BSES said on Sunday: “The BSES followed best practice in everything they did.” - Daily Mail