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Panicked woman to 911: ‘Oh my God! A bear is in my house!’

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The dispatcher didn’t even get a chance to finish her first sentence.

“9-1-1, what is your emer…”

“Oh my God! A bear is in my house!” the woman on the other end of the line yells in a panic.

“Inside the house?”

“INSIDE the house!”

“Is everybody out of the house?”

“No! Just me, I’m in the house!”

For about eight minutes Wednesday, a Duarte woman hid in fear, locked in her bathroom, while a 1-year-old bear scrounged through her kitchen.

“He’s not interested in you, OK?” the 911 dispatcher reassured the woman. “He’s interested in whatever food he can find downstairs.”

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The bear, possibly lured by the smell of food or trash, entered the kitchen just before 2 p.m. Wednesday through a window in the 70 block of Crestview Court, police said.

“I heard him breaking in ‘cause I heard something and I said ‘What’s going on?” and I went downstairs and I went ‘Oh my God!’ I thought someone had broken into my house ... and I looked out the door,” the woman said.

“Not exactly the guest you expected, huh?” the dispatcher replied.

As the woman hid upstairs, sheriff’s deputies and Duarte animal-control officers arrived and scared the bear off. No one was injured, including the bear, officials said.

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The incident was the second caper by an Angeles National Forest bear on Wednesday. Earlier in the morning, a bear roamed a Sun Valley neighborhood until it was tranquilized and released in the forest.

The Sun Valley bear also made an appearance in La Cañada Flintridge earlier in the month, a state Fish and Wildlife official said.

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joseph.serna@latimes.com

@josephserna

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