OTISFIELD – A bear that ripped apart a locked garbage shed on Gore Road late Monday night and returned Tuesday afternoon near where four children were playing was shot and killed by the homeowner.

Donna Thomas of 623 Gore Road said the bear had been getting into her trash and raiding her aunt’s birdfeeder next door.

“We got up this morning to a big mess out here,” she said Tuesday evening. The bear had gotten into her large locked garbage shed.

“It literally ripped the doors off, ripped the side out,” she said, and “took my aunt’s birdfeeder out.’

She said Tuesday afternoon she was sitting outside with her four grandchildren when the bear came into the driveway of her uncle Philip DeCoste’s trailer, which is on her property.

DeCoste, who is in his mid-60s, was standing next to his car at the time, she said.

“It came right in his driveway. He went inside and got a gun” and shot it.

She estimated it weighed 200 lbs.

“It’s not the first time it’s come in the yard,” she said. “We’ve seen bear here a lot, but they’ve never bothered.”

Thomas said her uncle had a wooden bin underneath his trailer where he stored garbage and bears have gotten into it.

Maine Warden Service Sgt. Don Gray said he talked to Thomas earlier in the week after she reported the bear had gotten into her garbage and strewn it around. He said he advised her to pick up the garbage and get rid of it or the bear would probably return.

“She told me she was going to put it in a big metal garbage container and I said that would probably work. I explained to her that if it came back we could probably get a live trap and release it” elsewhere. “We left it at that.”

Gray said that late Tuesday afternoon he was advised the bear had been shot.

“I was kind of upset,” he said. “I asked if it was attacking somebody. She said they were concerned because they had grandchildren out there. I guess her uncle came up and shot the bear. We would have preferred to remove it.”

“I asked her, ‘Couldn’t he have shot a shot over its head and try to scare it away.’ I guess they didn’t think of that.

“We don’t want someone to get hurt. If there was a danger of someone getting mauled, we don’t want that,” Gray said.

“We don’t know if it has cubs,” Gray said.

Jack Knight of Bridgton, an animal damage control officer, was expected to retrieve the carcass, he said.

“If there are cubs they will be hanging around there,” the sergeant advised.

“We’ll have to try to corral them and take them to the game farm” in Gray. There the cubs would be raised to adults and then released in the wild.

If they are not taken into custody, Gray said, “They would probably survive but they’d be real small come fall. So it would be good if there weren’t any.”

Warden Neil Wykes has been assigned to investigate the incident, he said.


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