Police found the carcass of the 100-pound black bear outside a Dollar Tree store on Richmond Hill Road in New Springville.
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"It is a mystery," witness Ali Abisse said. "I went and looked at it, it was a big black bear. big. It looked like it was run over or hit by a car."
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The bear had a large open wound on its body.
Abisse saw with his own eyes what Citizen App captured on camera. He saw it around 11:30 p.m. Sunday.
"I think it's been dead since yesterday morning," Abisse said. "I'm not an expert, but it looked like it was wounded a lot because it's arm was broken and it's leg was, it looked like it was hit by a car."
The state Department of Environmental Conservation took the bear's body to a lab for a necropsy to help determine its cause of death.
There is no known population of black bears on Staten Island.
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The investigation is ongoing, and additional information will be provided as it becomes available.
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