Authorities say Nicholas Hamlett killed a man in Tennessee in an attempt to steal his identity, and reported it to police as a bear attack. He was arrested in South Carolina after a weekslong manhunt.

Nicholas Wayne Hamlett pretended to be a man named Brandon Andrade when he dialed 911 around 11:34 p.m. on Oct. 24 and told police he was injured and trapped in a body of water after a bear chased him off a cliff while hiking in Hamilton County, Tennessee, the Monroe County Sheriff's Office wrote in a Facebook post at the time.

A man accused of killing a person and staging it as a fatal bear attack in Tennessee was taken into custody in South Carolina over the weekend on murder charges, in what authorities described as a plot to steal the victim's identity.