‘Oh my God, there is a bear in the car’

BOULDER, Colo. — A Boulder couple woke up Tuesday morning to find their car doors open. What they saw next left them speechless.

“The car was rocking, so what do we do? We all came out and gawked. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, there is a bear in the car’.”

Wynn Waggoner saw the 300 lb. bear trapped in a KIA Sorento in front of the house. It was apparently attracted by the smell of food.

“There’s some dried oatmeal that was in there, that and some protein mix,” she said. “Not anything you would call fresh food, but to the bear it was food.”

For what Waggoner believes was hours, the bear fought hard to get out, all the while ripping the SUV to shreds.              

“What he did to the car was amazing to me,” she said. “I could never have imagined that kind of capability in an animal. It’s gone; it looks like a bomb hit it.”

She called 911 and eventually Colorado Parks and Wildlife came out. They opened the back door and the bear ran right off.

“That bear just came straight at me and went right that way,” she described.  “That bear was just like, ‘Thank you, I’m free and I will see you later, I’m out of dodge.’ That’s all that bear cared about.”

The car doesn’t actually belong to the Waggoners, it belongs to a friend of theirs who is away in Florida.