{"id":9221,"date":"2015-10-14T15:18:11","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T19:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/?p=9221"},"modified":"2017-04-14T16:03:19","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T20:03:19","slug":"nrp-mourns-passing-of-k-9-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/2015\/10\/14\/nrp-mourns-passing-of-k-9-bear\/","title":{"rendered":"NRP Mourns Passing of K-9 Bear"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"April<\/a>The Maryland Natural Resources Police (NRP) mourns the death last weekend of K-9 Bear, assigned to the Central Region.<\/p>\n

Born on Nov. 5, 2004, Bear was purchased as a hunting dog. But when the owner realized he did not have time to train the black Lab, he donated it to Delaware Fish and Game.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In 2006, Bear met his handler, Sgt. April Sharpeta for the first time as they began 10 weeks of K-9 school at Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The dog was certified with the U.S. Police K-9 Association to track people, search for items and detect illegally harvested deer, turkey, ducks, geese and bear.<\/p>\n

Just two weeks into his NRP career, Bear assisted Havre de Grace Police in locating a suspect who stole a vehicle. It took Bear just eight minutes to track the suspect, who suffered life-threatening injuries from crashing the vehicle, to a cornfield.<\/p>\n

One week later, Bear made his first gun recovery while tracing the steps of three suspects. Bear pulled off the human track to find the gun.<\/p>\n

“It is an amazing and rewarding job to train as a K-9 team,” Sharpeta said. “We created an unbreakable bond that allowed us to understand each other without even speaking. All of the time and effort pays off when you find a person, return an article or locate illegal game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bear\u2019s final efforts involved finding the gun on state land left by a suicidal subject and tracking two homicide suspects from the crime scene to the site where they were apprehended.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 26, Bear–ever the goodwill ambassador–greeted hundreds of families at a National Hunting and Fishing Day event in Marriottsville.<\/p>\n

Two weeks later, on Oct. 9, Bear died after a short illness, his partner at his side.<\/p>\n

\u201cK-9 Bear was an outstanding dog. I am proud of the cases he made along with the loyalty that he showed me,” Sharpeta said. “He will always be my greatest accomplishment at the Natural Resources Police.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Maryland Natural Resources Police (NRP) mourns the death last weekend of K-9 Bear, assigned to the Central Region. Born on Nov. 5, 2004, Bear was purchased as a hunting dog. But when the owner realized he did not have time to train the black Lab, he donated it to Delaware Fish and Game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[957,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appnews","category-nrp-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9221"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9225,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9221\/revisions\/9225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}