State trooper Sgt. Aaron Frenzel said this week that an investigation into the actions of a man wearing a bear costume along the Chilkoot River last week is continuing.
The man, resident Joe Parnell, this week declined to answer questions about the matter. “The allegations are false,” he said.
Parnell is a tour bus driver, local comic and satirist and occasional columnist for the CVN who has worn the bear outfit in numerous skits, parades and events for the past three years.
Fish and Game weir worker Lou Cenicola filed a complaint about an incident Aug. 10 where a man in a realistic bear suit “ran up to the weir gate, waving and jumping,” trying to get the attention of a brown bear sow, coming within five to 10 feet of cubs there.
“I yelled and waved him back. Luckily, the sow was watching me and didn’t notice him,” Cenicola wrote. He said he “ran the sow and cubs off” and showed Parnell his badge and told him “if he did it again I would turn him in to the ranger or state police and have him ticketed and booted from the park.”
Cenicola said he saw the man in the bear suit later a distance down the road, and approached the man in the suit, who declined to identify himself.
Cenicola said the stunt was the “most reckless and stupidest thing I’ve ever seen here around bears.” “He could have gotten himself and 25 or so other people, including me, seriously hurt,” Cenicola wrote.
Cenicola this week did not return a message for him left at the Haines Fish and Game office.
News stories about the incident ran in newspapers nationwide.