47-year-old Ashley McGowin from Asheville, North Carolina woke up one morning to let her dogs outside to go potty, as she normally does, when she spotted a big black bear climbing out of the front windshield of her car.
She and her husband said they walked right up to the car before realizing a black bear was stuck inside the vehicle. Once they both were aware, they ran back inside the house and started filming from the window. It was about 6:30 in the morning on Thursday when it happened.
“The dogs started barking ferociously as if there was something out in the yard, and when I looked out into the driveway [I saw the bear],” she told WLOS.
When they spoke with the neighbors, they said they heard an intermittent honking vehicle around midnight, however, the McGowin family, including their four dogs, never heard a sound.
“No one woke up and heard the alarm, and I have four dogs,” she said. “We all must have been in a really deep sleep.”
Her husband Joseph, 52, said he noticed the hazard lights on when he first walked outside, right before discovering the bear stuck inside.
“I went and approached the car, along with my husband, and that’s when we realized there was a bear in the car,” Ashley said. “You first saw the paw, then you saw the elbow, then the snout [coming out],” Ashley explained, recalling the moment the bear punched through the windshield. “I was nervous for my car and I was nervous for the bear. There was no way out.”Â
The momma bear was stuck in the car, and she also had two bear cubs that had climbed up a tree in the front yard not far from the vehicle.
“I captured a few moments after the momma [bear] punched through my front windshield,” she said.
After crawling through the windshield, the bear climbed around onto the hood of the car for a moment before gathering her youngins and wandering back off into the woods.
The bear was said to have been in the car for about six hours and must have opened the door on its own and accidentally locked itself inside. During those six hours locked inside the SUV, however, the bear completely destroyed the car.