Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Black bear crawls into van with child inside in Coquitlam neighbourhood

Bear/Shutterstock A mother's quick actions saved her child from a harrowing encounter with a bear over the long weekend. The incident happened on Saturday morning in the Westwood Plateau area of Coquitlam.

 Photo ShutterstockBear/Shutterstock

A mother's quick actions saved her child from a harrowing encounter with a bear over the long weekend.

The incident happened on Saturday morning in the Westwood Plateau area of Coquitlam.

Conservation officer Eric Tyukodi says the child was in the front passenger seat and the family was loading groceries into the van to take to one of their neighbours.

The mother and one of the children went back inside to get more food and came back outside to find a black bear near the vehicle going after a bag of oats.

The mother managed to scare the bear away by activating the van's panic alarm and the bear wandered into a neighbours' yard taking the bag of oats along to eat.

By the time conservation officers arrived and searched the area the animal was gone.

"No contact was made with the child and there was no damage to the vehicle itself," Tyukodi says but the situation is "concerning" because the bear appears to lack a fear of people, be habituated to humans an have a high food conditioning.

The animal had two tags in its ear suggesting previous encounters with people and the investigation is ongoing. "We definitely want to remove [the bear] from that area."