‘Vicious Bear (Cocaine Bear)’: The true story that inspired (pun intended) the film

Since the trailer for ‘Vicious Bear’ (Cocaine Bear) came out, the little film directed by Elizabeth Banks It has become one of the most anticipated movies of 2023. Why? Well, its crazy premise is one of those that leaves no one indifferent on the Internet: A Bear Finds A Shipment Of Cocaine And Gets Up To The Barlashing out at campers, traffickers, police and everyone who gets in front of him.

But, as almost always, however incredible and surreal the plot of the film may seem, reality is stranger than fiction. The synopsis of ‘Vicious Bear’ is inspired by a true event happened in the woods of Georgia in the 1980s. This is the true story of the “cocaine addict bear”.

On September 11, 1985, Andrew Thornton He put his Cessna plane on autopilot and jumped into the void with a parachute and more than 300 pounds of cocaine (about 135 kilos). Thornton was a lawyer and a narcotics agent, but also the alleged leader of a drug gang that had intercepted the merchandise in a raid. The exact reasons are not known (surely the parachute did not work as it should because of the weight), but Thornton did not survive. His body crashed along with 40 kilos of cocaine in the driveway of a residence in Knoxville, Tennessee. In his pocket, investigators found the keys to the plane, which had crashed in North Carolina. The agents suspected that there would be more drugs in the surroundingsso they began a search that lasted several months.

80 small bags of the white powder, each weighing about a pound, fell in northern Georgia, on the border with Tennessee. The authorities found the torn bales, the scattered drugs and an inert body next to it: a 175-pound (80-kilo) bear, dead. The medical examiner Dr. Kenneth Alonso he did an autopsy on the animal and confirmed the suspicions. The bear had died of an overdose.

In a news item published by Associated Press On Christmas Eve in 1985, the doctor stated that the bear had absorbed only 3 or 4 grams of cocaine into its bloodstream, although it was not ruled out that it had eaten or inhaled much more. The day before, in another AP articlethe official Gary Garner confessed that “the bear got there before us, opened the duffel bag, did some cocaine and overdosed. There’s nothing left but bones and skin.”

What happened in the four weeks between the bear taking the drug and its body being found dead is anyone’s guess.. But the film is in charge of theorizing with humor and bad milk what could have happened if a group of people had faced the predator set up to the bars.

What we do know is what happened to the remains of the animal. Or at least what the mall says Kentucky Fun Mall what happened, since those responsible They claim they have the real stuffed bear in the story in their store. According to his blog, the animal was on the Las Vegas property of country singer Waylon Jennings until it was donated to the mall in 2005, where it has been on display ever since, as can be seen on his Instagram.