{"id":641537,"date":"2026-05-13T23:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T23:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/641537\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T23:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T23:23:08","slug":"have-you-seen-this-officers-free-black-bear-locked-in-hotel-bathroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/641537\/","title":{"rendered":"Have You Seen This? Officers free black bear locked in hotel bathroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

GATLINBURG, Tennessee \u2014 A black bear isn’t uncommon in the Gatlinburg, Tennessee, area, particularly in the woods or even running through a backyard. But finding one in a hotel bathroom is unusual … even for that area.<\/p>\n

Gatlinburg is a mountain town outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.<\/p>\n

Last Friday, the Gatlinburg Police Department was called to investigate a problem inside one of the bathrooms at the Quality Inn & Suites in the downtown area \u2014 a black bear had somehow managed to lock itself inside.<\/p>\n

\n

Video of the incident<\/a> shows several officers working on the door to unlock it, with one officer appearing to have armed himself with a 2×4, cracking the door open and running to join his colleagues who have already taken cover.<\/p>\n

Moments later, a black bear opens the door and walks out. He looks toward the officers, then runs in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

Police say the bear damaged a mirror in the bathroom. But neither the bear nor any officers were injured.<\/p>\n

Have you seen this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GATLINBURG, Tennessee \u2014 A black bear isn’t uncommon in the Gatlinburg, Tennessee, area, particularly in the woods or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1302,3811,3812,134,3729,3,3813,3814,79,99,1505,2987,3324,2986,201],"class_list":["post-641537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-cars","tag-classifieds","tag-homes","tag-jobs","tag-local","tag-news","tag-radio","tag-salt-lake","tag-science","tag-sports","tag-television","tag-traffic","tag-utah","tag-weather","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}