By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
Police shot and killed a bear on Biorka Street early today when it approached an officer investigating a report of a bear rummaging through garbage cans in the area, police say.
Police received a call at 2:02 a.m. that the bear was in the 600 block of Biorka Street, in proximity to Baranof Elementary School, police sergeant Lance Ewers said this morning.
“The officers responded to the area to haze the bear out of that area. And the way we do that is by using lights and sirens and beeping horns and yelling at the bear… But this bear unfortunately got desensitized to the normal practices that would make a normal bear run away, and actually started approaching the officer and walked towards the officer and didn’t stop,” Ewers said.
The bear got to about 20 feet before the officer fired a 12 gauge slug into the animal, he said. The officer was alarmed by the bear’s willingness to approach a person.
“That’s super close, you know, and that kind of behavior is super, super scary, because we have children that walk to that school every day,” Ewers said.
The slug “knocked the bear down, but it rolled off into the (nearby) brushy area. And it didn’t go, didn’t leave, it just stayed there and we immediately contacted the Alaska State Troopers… Together, once a trooper got there, we were able to locate the bear and then put it down, euthanize it,” Ewers reported.
Multiple shots were fired to finish off the bear, though officers took care to ensure they were shooting downwards at the animal so as not to risk hitting nearby buildings, he said.
The incident was over around 3:30 a.m., he added. The seven-foot bear was the fifth killed in Sitka this year.
With the salmon spawning season running down and bears looking for food elsewhere, Ewers said it’s especially important now for people to take proper care of their garbage.
“We’re getting a lot of reports of feisty bears that are trying to calorie up before they go to sleep, and please, please take extra precautions now, this time of year more than any other time of year, with your garbage,” he said.
Police have issued a number of bear-related citations this year.
“They’re really becoming a problem. And in different other areas of our city, where they’ve learned that garbage is a source and they’re going all over, getting people’s garbage, going onto people’s decks and pulling their garbage cans down. ... I hope that this is the last bear that will have to be euthanized, but I’m not convinced,” Ewers said.
