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Black bear spotted roaming near Chesapeake school bus stop

Posted at 4:05 PM, Sep 17, 2014
and last updated 2014-09-17 18:54:52-04

A Chesapeake woman is concerned after spotting a black bear roaming in an area near a school bus stop on Wednesday morning.

Sheila Spittle says she saw the bear wandering around a hotel parking lot on Gum Road, just feet from where children were waiting for their bus.

"[The bear was] just walking around and he wasn't aggressive and he wasn't afraid of people. He just came on out and just looked around," she says.

Spittle snapped a photo and says she's upset and even frustrated at the lack of response from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

"What about these children? Nobody is going to take any measures to protect these children? These are small kids. Some of them are middle school children. They're going to be curious and this bear and they're going to approach this bear," she says.

Chesapeake Police did respond but Spittle says that was only after she told them that a guest at the hotel had a handgun and threatened to shoot the animal.

She says other than telling everyone to get inside, police didn't do much.

"I want the game warden to come out and at least see what's going on with this bear. I love Chesapeake Police, they're great, but they're not equipped to deal with a bear," she says.

The district supervisor for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries says they were in contact with officials from Chesapeake on Wednesday morning and they said to call if there were any other problems, otherwise they didn't feel they needed to respond because it wasn't an immediate danger.