Black bear 'wreaked havoc' on car after being locked inside, RCMP say

A black bear accidentally got locked in a car in Coquitlam Thursday, destroying the interior before being freed by police.

The local RCMP detachment posted about the incident on social media, saying the bear was able to get into the car because it was left unlocked.

"The bear wreaked havoc on the interior. Officers broke a window to set the bear free," the Coquitlam RCMP said on X, urging locals to be "bear smart" to prevent similar "wild encounters."

Coquitlam is a certified Bear Smart community, a designation that means the city has committed to a number of measures meant to prevent human-bear conflicts. Most of these incidents happen when bears become habituated to human food, and once that has happened the B.C. Conservation Officer Service says there is often "no choice but to euthanize those bears."

The BCCOS' publicly available statistics for 2024 only go up until the end of April. During the first four months of this year, officers attended 142 calls about black bears, destroyed 29 bears, and relocated one adult and seven cubs. However, the highest number of conflicts per year are typically reported later in the spring and through the summer.