Bear! Russian Mall Suffers Attack On Video, Police Investigated For Shooting Bear Dead

A wild bear’s Russian mall romp was caught on video, with the bear attacking a window only to roam around freely within the shopping mall. Although no human was injured by the bear, the local police chased the bear down and shot the bear dead after it left the Russian mall. Some are questioning whether the police could have subdued the wild bear without killing it, and the Investigative Committee, Russia’s main state investigative agency, is launching into a probe into the actions by the police officers.

In a related report by the Inquisitr, a wild bear in Montana was photographed and video recorded when it surprised students inside Bozeman High School by running around the entire facility.

As urban sprawls begin to encroach upon the territory of wild animals, it seems almost inevitable that a bear may go shopping for food inside a mall. Police in the Russian city of Khabarovsk, which is located far to the east near the border with China, say the wild bear was first spotted in a parking lot of a sporting arena. By time the police officers arrived on scene, the bear’s Russian mall shopping excursion had already begun.

The video released by Russian media shows the wild bear attacking a window, smashing it to pieces in order to enter the Russian mall. The camouflaged police officers managed to chase the wild creature out of the shops, and it went barreling down the street. Law enforcement officials became concerned about the potential for a bear attack after the animal entered a kindergarten playground, so the police shot the bear dead before it could do any harm.

According to the Associated Press, Russia’s Investigative Committee is investigating whether or not the local police in Khabarovsk should have killed the bear. But animal rights activist Natalya Kovalenko claims the police did the right thing.

“The choice here was obvious: they had to act fast to avoid human casualties,” he said, according to Russia Today.

Khabarovsk has a good reason to fear a fatal bear attack. In 2015 alone, there have been 30 bear sightings near humans in the area, and during the summer, a fisherman was torn to pieces during a bear attack. In September, another bear was put down since it was stealing honey from a collection of beehives.

The Russian bear population in the area has also greatly increased in recent years. Bear hunting has dropped in popularity ever since China legalized bear farming in their territory, and now hunters do not have an incentive to kill any bears for their fur. The Khabarovsk Region’s Environmental Resources Ministry believes there are at least 15,000 brown bears in their area.

As for what triggered the wild bear’s Russian mall romp, Andrey Mamayev, head of Russia’s hunting monitoring agency, believes it is possible the young bear, estimated to be around 1-year-old, may have just started living without its mother. Since brown bears hibernate during the winter, it is possible the young bear risked swimming a 1.16 kilometer section of the Amur River in order to find a suitable den for hibernating.

“We can conclude that the inexperienced bear decided to swim across the Amur River in search of a den,” Mamaev said.

It is also possible the wild bear was simply hungry. Brown bears will often go into human territory to find easy sources of food, and bears are often not afraid to roam where they do not belong. In this case, authorities find it doubtful the wild bear would have risked swimming the Amur river since bears usually stick to easy meals.

[Photo by Mark Metcalfe / Getty Images]