A bear seen in Winnipeg early Saturday morning has been slaughtered after a Winnipeg police officer shot him.
Winnipeg police said CTV News officers received two separate calls about bear sightings in the city on Saturday morning. The first call came shortly before 2 a.m. on Kildonan Meadow Drive in Transcona. However, by the time the agents arrived, the bear was gone.
Police received a second call about observing a bear on the 800 block of Talbot Avenue a few hours later at around 4:45 a.m. Police were unable to confirm whether it was the same bear from the first call. .
Winnipeg police confirmed that the bear was shot by one of the officers who responded. Police said the bear ran up a tree where it was injured until Manitoba Conservation agents arrived a few hours later.
“Concern for public safety was raised as the main reason for its course of action due to the time of day and the restless state of the bear,” Const said. Claude Chancy, a public information officer with the Winnipeg Police Service, told CTV News in an email.
Nicole Sauve, who lives on Talbot Avenue, told CTV News that she woke up Saturday morning with what she described as a big explosion.
Sauve said officers told him to keep his family and pets at home because there was a bear in the backyard tree.
David and Lorraine Jacobson, who also live in the area and said they also heard what appeared to be shots around 5 a.m. Saturday morning and saw police in the area.
“They were focusing on all the trees,” David said.
Sauve said police allowed him to leave the house later that morning with his children for a few hours. When he returned, the bear was out of the tree.
A bear is shown here after Manitoba Conservation officers reassured him in Winnipeg on June 18, 2022. The bear later had to be slaughtered as a result of injuries after a police officer he shot her. (Submitted by: Nicole Sauve)
“They had reassured the bear and it had fallen from the tree into our shed and then I guess they dropped it on the ground,” he said, adding that conservation agents had later set it in a trap. for bears and they have taken him away.
A provincial spokesman told CTV News that conservation officers responded to a call from Winnipeg police about a bear injured in a tree in the city’s Elmwood area.
“The animal was reassured and safely removed from the area,” the spokesman said in an email.
The spokesman said that due to the extent of the bear’s wounds, he had to be sacrificed.
Lorraine said that in the 36 years she and her husband have lived in their home, they had never seen a bear in the area before. He said it was terrible how the situation ended, but he realized there were safety issues as there are children living in the neighborhood.
“It’s a shame the poor bear went the way he did. But there are so many kids in the community that safety is more important,” he said.
Sauve said she is upset about how the situation was handled.
“The fact that they had to shoot him in my house,” he said. “The fact that he had to be euthanized, that he was hurt like that. I think they could have found a way to avoid that.”