At 11:30pm on Saturday, 4/30, a caller reported seeing a bear in the front yard of his home at the foot of West Wing Mountain, in the 27500 Block of North 85^th Drive.  Peoria Animal Control and patrol officers responded, but lost sight of the bear after calling the Arizona Department of Game and Fish.

Six hours later, at 5:30am on Sunday, 5/1, a caller reported seeing a bear near Peoria’s Sunrise Mountain Public Library on Lake Pleasant Pkwy.  Patrol officers responded and kept a visual and loose perimeter on the bear while they called Game and Fish, who tranquilized the bear at around 8am.

According to Game and Fish, the bear appears to be a 1 ½ year old, adolescent male, North American Black Bear which weighs approximately 80 pounds and appears to be in good health. They will release him into a natural habitat at an undisclosed location in northern Arizona where his chances of survival are the greatest.  Typically, this type of bear would remain with its mother until it was closer to 2 years old, but common circumstances would result in an earlier separation according to Game and Fish.

It is most likely that the bear wandered down from the foothills of the Bradshaw Mountains.  Bears of this age and size are not typically aggressive unless cornered, and as the pictures taken by patrol officers indicate, he was hiding and sheepishly peeking out of his location near the library when they spotted him. 

You want to buy a used car with a low amount of miles. But you need to be aware of the potential for odometer fraud, something that occurs more often with unlicensed dealers or private sellers.

“Odometer fraud is a situation in which a seller has intentionally taken miles off an odometer to increase the value of a vehicle,” said Inspector General Tom Clinkenbeard.

Clinkenbeard says buyers need to use common sense and do their research ahead of time before they ever put money down on a used vehicle. That includes researching vehicles up for sale through carfax.com or autocheck.com. These websites can tell potential buyers if a vehicle has ever been in a crash in which an insurance claim was paid out, or what a vehicle’s mileage was every time a title was issued.

Other important tips for consumers include:

• Be alert to the seller’s actions, how information is provided, and the location of the sale. If the sale appears suspicious, don’t buy the vehicle.
• Have a reputable mechanic or repair facility inspect the vehicle before making a purchase.
• Examine the title closely for altered information. The title must be in the seller’s name.
• Look for the odometer miles displayed, and then compare that number to the average number of miles driven per year. On average, a vehicle is driven 12,000 miles per year.
• Inspect the vehicle to make sure the overall condition matches the mileage. See if the vehicle has been repainted and if the tires match. Test drive the vehicle before buying.

Because I’m a Traffic Guy, this stuff interests me…check this story about the Longest and Shortest Streets in the World…Click HERE!

One of the smaller parks in city of Phoenix is the Cancer Survivors Park at 1^st Street and Willetta.  It runs from Willetta to McDowell and was established through the Richard and Annette Bloch Foundation.  In the park are a number of bronze statues of people.  Sometime, believed to be between the morning of Friday, April 15^th, and the morning of Monday, April 18^th, someone broke an approximately four-foot tall statue of a small girl from the base and stole the statue.  All that remains is the shoe, which was securely anchored to the ground as the base.  The cost to replace the statue is estimated to be about $12,000.

Anyone who may have information concerning this incident or knows the suspects or where the statue is, is encouraged to call the Phoenix Police Department Violent Crimes Bureau at (602) 262-6141 or Silent Witness at (480) WITNESS, (480) TESTIGO for Spanish.

A team of students at Université Laval just won first place for the third time in the Shell Eco-marathon in Houston with their svelte hypermiling supercar, which gets an incredible fuel efficiency of 2,564.8 MPG! The annual Shell Eco-marathon challenges high school and college students to design, build and test energy efficient vehicles, and the Alerion team have proven themselves to be masters at their craft. The prototype beat out the second place winners by a whopping 766.1 miles per gallon, and the vehicle even improved upon Université Laval’s entry last year by 77 miles per gallon. Read the full story HERE