A family’s Fourth of July outing took a frightening turn when a bear charged at a father outside his Lake Tahoe vacation home after startling his daughters.
Cortlandt Koerwitz told ABC News his daughters were packing coolers in the garage for a boating trip when they spotted a bear rummaging through the family’s garbage.
Cortlandt Koerwitz/Instagram – PHOTO: In this screen grab from a video, a bear charges at a man in Tahoma, Calif., on July 4, 2026.
“The girls said that the bear, instead of running away like normal, the bear kind of came towards them,” Koerwitz said.
Koerwitz said he grabbed the bear spray he keeps by the garage door before the bear charged at him.
“It was rushing me,” he said. “The bear spray worked, you know, and it worked on me too. It definitely worked.”
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Video shared with ABC News shows the bear charging toward Koerwitz in the driveway before turning away after he deployed the bear spray.
Koerwitz said encounters with bears are common near the family’s Lake Tahoe vacation home, and he even shared video of a previous encounter from two years ago. But he said this was the first time he had seen a bear behave aggressively.
Cortlandt Koerwitz/Instagram – PHOTO: In this screen grab from a video, a man sprays bear spray at a charging bear, in Tahoma, Calif., on July 4, 2026.
Koerwitz said he hopes others who live in bear country will keep bear spray readily available.
He said that without it, he would have had no way to defend himself.
“It wasn’t a lot of options if I didn’t have that bear spray,” he added.
ABC News’ Alex Stone contributed to this report.
