‘Human skin’ teddy bear was left at a SoCal gas station. Suspected prankster arrested
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A macabre teddy bear that appeared to be made out of human skin and was found outside a Victorville gas station over the weekend turned out to be a practical joke — and the suspected practical joker has been arrested — according to authorities.
On Monday, Hector Corona Villanueva was arrested on suspicion of filing a report to authorities of an emergency, knowing it was false and intentionally planting evidence to falsely present it as real, according to a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department news release.
“Incidents such as this take up valuable emergency resources and put the public at risk, possibly delaying response time to legitimate calls for service,” according to the release. “We would like to thank those that reported information that was helpful during the investigation of this case.”
On Sunday at 12:07 p.m., deputies from the Victorville Police Department responded to a call at the AMPM gas station on Bear Valley Road, officials said. Deputies found a teddy bear that was made of what looked like human skin. The San Bernardino County coroner collected the bear and determined it wasn’t made of human remains.
Wildlife officials estimate there are now 60,000 black bears in California, roughly triple the figure from 1998. With human-bear encounters on the rise, some rural areas want more leeway to hunt bears down.
South Carolina artist Robert Kelly of Dark Seed Creations confirmed in a Facebook post that he was the creator of the bear and had shipped one of them to an Etsy customer in Victorville last week.
For the record:
2:19 p.m. July 15, 2025An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Robert Kelly using the pronoun “she.”
The bears in the Facebook video Kelly posted were stitched together like a Frankenstein monster with “human skin” and tinged with what appeared to be blood.
“No, I did not have any knowledge of the buyers intentions nor was I involved in a prank on the other side of the nation from me,” he wrote.
The bear sells for $165 on the seller’s Etsy shop and is now sold out.
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