New Westminster resident James MacNeill was having a normal day Thursday. He attended class at Simon Fraser University, came home and started mowing the lawn. Then he saw a police officer gesturing for him to take his earbuds out.
"He says, 'Hey, just so you know, there's a bear in the area right now,'" MacNeill said, recalling the conversation in an interview with CTV News.
A few minutes later, the black bear had collapsed on MacNeill's lawn, just a few feet from where he had been standing.
"The bear was – his legs were still touching the lawnmower," he said. "So, it was a little interesting. It was kind of cool, though. I'm not going to lie."
Police and conservation officers spent much of the afternoon tracking the bear through the city.
The New Westminster Police Department tweeted around 12:15 p.m. that a bear had been spotted near the intersection of 14th and London streets.
It was a few hours later when the bear succumbed to a tranquilizer near the intersection of 7th Avenue and Curnew Street.
"It's certainly not normal for New Westminster," said Alicia Buchanan, one of the conservation officers who helped wrangle the animal.
"We get a bear every few years in New Westminster. It's not a typical place that we're seeing them."
Buchanan told CTV News that officers have "very little history" on the black bear. She said they had not yet had a chance to evaluate it and determine its sex or approximate age.
"It does have an ear tag, which tells us we likely have dealt with it before," she said. "We're just trying to determine in what capacity and where it came from."
That information will help the BC Conservation Officer Service determine what to do next with the animal, Buchanan said.
On Friday, the BCCOS confirmed in a statement to CTV News that the bear had been killed.
"Despite our best efforts, this bear was simply too comfortable around urban settings and people, and to ensure public safety, the bear was put down," the service said.
