Teen shoves bear that swatted family dog in California yard
Hailey Morinico didn’t hesitate when she saw a large bear facing off with her family dogs from the top of a wall in their Southern California backyard.
The 17-year-old ran outside and shoved the bear away, then rounded up the dogs and went back inside her house in suburban Bradbury, east of Los Angeles.
Home surveillance video aired by the ABC 7 television station shows the mother bear perched atop the wall, swatting at a large black dog on the ground. Two bear cubs are seen behind the bear while four smaller dogs bark and dart around the yard.
Morinico sprints toward the bear, uses both hands to push the large bear off the wall and picks up one of the smaller dogs. She and the other dogs then run out of the video frame.
A long-simmering crisis of mental health struggles among students has been magnified by the pandemic, and most teachers are not adequately prepared to deal with it as campuses reopen.
The bears disappear over a wall into a neighbor’s yard.
“Honestly, the only thing I had in mind was to protect my dogs,” Morinico said.
The teen said she escaped with only a sprained finger and a scraped knee but wouldn’t advise anyone to follow her example.
“Do not push bears and do not get close to bears,” she told KCAL-TV. “You do not want to get unlucky. I just happened to come out unscathed.”
Bradbury is a foothill community on the edge of Angeles National Forest.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
