CHARLOTTE, N.C.- It wasn’t your average breaking-and-entering call, the one that came into the Appalachian State University police department minutes before midnight Monday.
The dispatcher listened as students described the scene outside their apartment window. The suspect, they said, was knocking in a door at the Holmes Convocation Center on busy U.S. 321 in Boone.
A one-word description was all police needed: Bear.
When officers arrived, they saw a brown bear had pushed the glass out of a ground-level door and was making its way down a hallway. For some reason, it made a U-turn and headed back out, according to ASU Police Chief Gunther Doerr. Spooked, perhaps by officer’s’ flashlights, the bear fled across campus and ran head-first into an office building, Thomas Hall, where it bloodied its nose on a window. Then it took off into nearby woods, according to the chief.
Officers searched for about an hour, wanting to make sure the bear was OK. Despite its size, estimated at 150 to 200 pounds, they never found the bear. No one else was injured in the incident, police said.
“There actually was a student working inside the convocation center, but I don’t think he was in the same hallway as the bear,” the chief said.
He estimated damages at $150 to $200.
“I’m trying to think of why he would’ve chosen that building to go into, but it’s beyond me.”
The convocation center, used for sporting and other events, has concession stands on the second floor, but no other food to speak of, Doerr said. “It’s just basically a kind of bizarre incident,” he said. “We’re going to be on the lookout for him.

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