Bear hit, killed on Sugarloaf Parkway in Gwinnett County

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By Mike Morris

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Motorists along Sugarloaf Parkway in Gwinnett County faced an unusual traffic jam early Thursday when a bear was struck and killed by a vehicle.

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Officials remove a black bear that was struck by a motorist along Sugarloaf Parkway in Gwinnett County off the roadway.

Nataly Hart, Telemundo Atlanta Officials remove a black bear that was struck by a motorist along Sugarloaf Parkway in Gwinnett County off the roadway.

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The black bear was hit before 8 a.m. near Old Peachtree Road, in front of Sugarloaf Country Club.

The bear ended up dead in the median of the roadway.

The eastbound lanes of Sugarloaf Parkway were briefly closed while authorities investigated the incident.

While somewhat unusual, it’s not rare for bears to be spotted in Georgia, and even for them to be hit by cars.

Ted Townsend Jr. knows all too well the dangers of bears wandering onto roads.

Townsend was northbound on I-85 in Gwinnett County on Jan. 13, 2004, when a large black bear darted in front of him from the median wall.

“I was in the middle lane, cruising at about 60 [mph] and all of a sudden, a bear comes out of nowhere,” Townsend told the AJC shortly after the accident. “I guarantee the bear was 6 or 7 feet tall. I weigh 250 and this thing made me look small.”

Townsend said he had no time to react. “It was in front of my car before I could even take a breath,” he said. “When we hit it, the air bags deployed, and we just started to merge right.”

Like Thursday’s incident, the bear hit by Townsend did not survive the encounter.

In 2008, three bears were struck by vehicles and killed on Cobb County roadways in less than a month. The bears were hit on Barrett Parkway at I-75, in the I-75/I-285 interchange and on Shallowford Road.

It wasn’t just a bear causing a wildlife hazard on metro roadways Thursday.

About an hour before the bear was hit, Doug Turnbull in the AM 750 and now 95.5 FM News/Talk WSB Traffic Center reported that a deer had crashed through the windshield of a car on Sharp Street at Bells Ferry Road in Cherokee County.