Police shoot sickly Lemon Creek bear
Bear did not appear to be immediate threat, but showed no fear of people, police said
Police officers shot and killed a black bear in the Lemon Creek area Saturday night after trying to coax the sickly animal away from homes for more than an hour.
Police first responded to calls about a bear lying in an alley near the Northwood Condos at 5:42 p.m. They decided to leave the animal alone, hoping it would go away, but continued to get calls. The bear wasn't acting normally and appeared to be sick, Police Capt. Tom Porter said.
Officers returned at 7:43 p.m. to find the bear lying in a carport with "labored and heavy breathing." When the bear stood up, it had to lean on the building for support, police said. After an hour, they directed the full-grown adult animal to a ditch near Super Kmart and shot it, Porter said. The bear's carcass was incinerated.
"We waited. It was between a storage shed and a side of a house and the animal did finally get up and start moving and when it did we were able to direct it into an area that was open," he said
Police usually contact the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in such situations, but were unable to reach local biologists, Porter said.
"I don't know of any people that were immediately threatened, but the factors were such that the animal wasn't showing fear or apprehension of people or officers in a highly populated area. Children live in that area and it appeared to be sick, which was a concern for us," he said. "The fact that we couldn't contact anyone from Fish and Game left us with very few choices."
Police have been getting calls about a bear rummaging through trash in the area for the past three weeks and are fairly certain it is the same animal, he said. The incident Saturday tied up three of five officers on duty for several hours, Porter said.
Polly Hessing, assistant area wildlife management biologist for Fish and Game, said she and her co-worker Neil Barten were out of town this weekend. Bears do get sick, although Hessing said she couldn't make a judgment on the situation without having seen what happened.
"The biggest mortality for bears is humans and other bears once they make it to adulthood, but other things can happen," she said.
Rebecca Van Keuren, who was eating dinner with her boyfriend across the street from the shooting Saturday, said she was surprised to hear a siren and gunshots.
"We called the police and they said it was a bear, they had just killed a bear," she said. "It was kind of scary, though, just not knowing why there were gunshots (earlier)."
Van Keuren said she hadn't seen the bear earlier that evening and didn't notice any people standing by when the animal was shot.
"There tend to be a lot of bears in the area. I just thought they would trap it," she said. "It was just sad, it was a very tiny bear."
Meanwhile, police plan to contact Fish and Game about another bear getting into garbage in the Lemon Creek area, Porter said.
Joanna Markell can be reached at joannam@juneauempire.com.