SPRING VALLEY, N.Y. (AP) – A big black bear spent Tuesday morning in a tree above the courtyard of a condominium complex and as many as 400 people spent Tuesday morning watching it.
The show was over by 1:15 p.m., when an officer from the state Department of Environmental Conservation shot the bear, an estimated 300-pounder, with a tranquilizer dart, said Officer Paul Deoul of the Spring Valley police. It tumbled 25 feet to the ground but was unhurt, he said.
The bear was then placed into a cage, loaded onto a truck and “taken to the mountains,” Deoul said.
The police began getting calls about the bear from the Victoria Gardens condo complex on Kearsing Parkway at about 9:15 a.m. As police arrived, the bear went up the tree.
The DEC was called, and the crowd grew as the bear waited in the tree and the police waited on the ground.
“I’d say we had 300 to 400 people,” Deoul said. The Ramapo Police Department and the Rockland County sheriff’s office sent help, and there were about 15 officers in all keeping an eye on the bear and the crowd.
Last month in Rockland, the Orangetown school district kept all 3,000 of its pupils inside all day after a black bear was sighted a few miles away.
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