(Picture: Instagram/thegardenstate)
An elderly woman has been taken to hospital after a wandering bear attacked her while she was shopping.
The animal entered the Dollar General store in Vernon, New Jersey last Tuesday, and was chased out by police who shot it with rubber pellets.
Two hours later it returned, attacking the dog of a neighbouring restaurant owner before re-entering the convenience store.
It proceeded to stalk the aisles, occasionally lunging at shoppers and pets.
Footage filmed by a local man as he tried to lure the 175lb (80kg) female out of the store shows her pacing sluggishly as though she may be sick.
The man is heard saying to the bear: ‘What’s up, buddy? You are one big, nasty motherf***er.
As she gets closer to him, he nervously says: ‘Where the f*** is the door?’
By this point the bear had already attacked a 90-year-old woman by either scratching or biting her leg, local police say.
A worker at a neighbouring business told The New York Times the woman appeared unfazed by the incident.
After being warned there was a bear in the store, the woman reportedly said ‘I know, he swiped at me’ and kept shopping.
She was hospitalised with non-severe injuries.
The dog was uninjured, its owner saying the bear had tackled the German Shepherd without biting or scratching it.
The bear had already been sighted in the area hours before entering the store.
After the incident in the store it was tracked to a nearby parking lot where officers determined that it needed to be euthanised.
State authorities collected the carcass to test it for rabies.
Authorities in Sussex County, where Vernon is located, counted 294 bear-related incidents this year as of last month, by far the highest of any county in the state.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
