A bear broke into a car in Genessee, Colorado, on Tuesday and two sheriff’s deputies caught the wild encounter on camera.
Annie Bruecker, 17, called 911 after she awoke to find a bear had locked itself
inside her Subaru, KDVR-TV reported.
"He’s tossing stuff in the back basically and then you can see the ceilings of my car just ripped and I was like, I’m not going to work today," Bruecker told the station.
A video of the encounter on YouTube was viewed more than 364,000 times by midday Friday.
It's unclear how exactly the bear got into the SUV. There were no broken windows or damage to the exterior of the vehicle, which Bruecker said she left unlocked.
The bear did so much damage to the interior of the car that it had to be towed.
“The whole ceiling was ripped. The plastic sunroof cover was ripped out. My steering wheel was chewed,” Bruecker said. “My neighbor actually described it as someone put a grenade in there and it just went off.”
Deputy Josh Tillman told CBS News he had never seen anything like it before.
"Never inside a car before. I've had bears inside a house but usually they're gone before we get there . . . This is the first one he's still been there when I got there," Tillman told CBS News.
Tillman eventually opened the back hatch of the car, and the bear ran into the woods.
Colorado is home to between 17,000 to 20,000 black bears, and encounters between people and bears are
common, National Geographic reported.
“At least twice a year, we see bears getting into cars,” Matt Robbins, Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s public information officer, told NatGeo. “We encourage campers and people close to bear habitats to lock their doors, [since] bears are extremely bright.”
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.