Latta High School and Middle School had a unique visitor Saturday morning, May 22. At 10:40 a.m. a black bear crossed Hwy. 301 in front of Latta High School and ran into the school parking lot.
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The bear ambled through the parking lot until getting spooked by traffic, at which point, he scaled the brick wall of the school and gained access to the roof, as shown in this Latta District video..
He crossed over the walkways to the roof of Latta Middle School and spent about twenty minutes roaming the high ground. A passerby alerted local Police Officer Ben Scott of the intruder, and he was able to get video of the bruin on top of the school.
The unusual visitor finally decided he was getting too much attention and jumped off of the roof closest to Hwy. 301 where he promptly scaled the fence, crossed the highway, ran through a yard and presumably found his way back to Buck Swamp.
School surveillance video was able to record the entire episode and thankfully he was able to navigate his trip to town safely and return from whence he came.
While uncommon, bear sightings in our area are not rare and many people in our area catch them on game cameras quite often. This occurrence was unique due to his arrival at the school, but the disruption was minimal since it was a non-school day. Although the bear would pose little threat to people, due to the location, school personnel are taking every precaution to ensure that our students and staff don’t have any surprise encounters.
You can watch the full video of his visit at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IOcq5XU4ho.
