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Police shoot black bear near A&W

May 5, 2013 | 10:42 AM

A large male black bear wandered into Prince Albert on Saturday evening, coming very close to the A&W at Highway 3 and Marquis Avenue.

A witness, Gloria Smith, said police responded to the scene and tried to scare the bear back into the bush.

“We saw the bear come out of the bush and then all the cops started to move towards the bear in their cars and they were honking their horns and doing their sirens and stuff,” she said.

The bear then ran back into the bush, she said, but quickly came back out just before an officer killed the bear with a shotgun.

The bear’s refusal to leave the area forced the officers to take deadly action, said Prince Albert police Sgt. Dennis Valmont. “He was ignoring anything they were doing and he was just trying to get into the garbage cans located in the back of A&W, there’s a big dumpster there.”

“Due to the area being populated with lots of people … and [he] was not leaving, at that point he was shot and destroyed.”

Just before the bear was shot, it started to move towards the city instead of back towards the bush, said Valmont.

“He tried to leave, it looks like, but he was going into the city, towards where a bunch of people were, so it looks like they cut him off … for safety reasons and the people there, they had to destroy it.”

Smith, who watched it all unfold from inside a car, had a good look at the aftermath of the incident.

“There was people standing around, there was people in A&W and they just shot it … then they moved their cop cars and barricaded it and then we drove by and there was blood all over the ground,” she said.

Saskatchewan Environment and Resource Management picked up the carcass.

sleslie@panow.com

On Twitter: @_seanleslie