TikTok Hailey Morinico is seen in this viral TikTok video pushing a bear off of a fence in the backyard of her California home to save her dogs.
Hailey Morinico is a 17-year-old California girl who shoved a bear off of a fence at her home in Bradbury to save her dogs. Security camera video was posted to TikTok by her cousin and it quickly went viral, with millions of views. Morinico said on TikTok she and her dogs were fine after the wild incident.
Morinico’s cousin, Brenda, who posts on TikTok with the username @bakedlikepie, uploaded the video recorded on a Vivint security system with the caption, “My cousin Hailey yeeted a bear off her fence today and saved her dogs. How was your Memorial Day?!”
The video showed the Southern California teen coming to rescue her dogs after a bear began attacking them in her backyard. The bear was on a fence and appears to have been trying to protect cubs that were with it. The 21-second video has been viewed more than 56 million times on TikTok, and copies of it posted to Twitter and YouTube have also racked up millions of views.
You can watch the video and learn more about the wild incident below:
The Video Shows Morinico Rushing Out of Her House & Pushing the Bear Off of the Fence Before Scrambling to Get Her Dogs to Safety
The chaotic 21-second video shows a bear with cubs on the top of a concrete fence in Hailey Morinico’s backyard. The family’s dogs, three small ones and a larger dog, can be seen trying to chase the bear away, running at it. At one point, the bear reaches down from the fence and swats the larger dog in the face, causing it to run off.
The video then shows Morinico sprinting out of her house. She runs straight up to the bear and pushes it, sending it tumbling off of the fence and to the ground below. Morinico then begins trying to gather up her smaller dogs to get them to safety as the bear climbs back up on the fence. The video ends with Morinico running off with one of her dogs in her arms.
Morinico posted the video on her own TikTok account and wrote, “That moment i fought a bear and won 😳. … dogs are okay! bear and her cubs are okay!”
According to ABC 7 News, the larger dog is Morinico’s mother’s service animal. The news station reports that Morinico and her dogs were not seriously injured.
Morinico told KTLA, “Don’t do what I did, you might not have the same outcome.”
Morinico’s Mother Called It ‘One of the Scariest Moments in My Life’ & Said Her Daughter ‘Saved Our Dog With Super Human Strength’
Morinico’s mother, Citlally Morinico, posted the video on Facebook and wrote, “My child … just saved our dog with super human strength. For me one of the scariest moments in life.”
Hailey Morinico talked about what happened in a TikTok storytime video. She said, “Hello, I am the person who fought off a bear to protect my kids. OK, to preface this, I live in the mountains, so this is actually like really normal and it’s summer so they always come out.” She said it was in their garden backyard area. She said she was alerted to the bear when her dogs started barking.
“And I thought they were just barking at a dog. Because they always bark at dogs or squirrels or whatever. I go to tell them to stop and when I go over there to see what they’re barking at I go, ‘That’s a funny looking dog.’ And by the time I get there, the bear is literally picking up one of my dogs,” Morinico. “I go over to the bear and I look it in the eyes and the first thing I do is think to push it. Push a bear. Push an apex predator, man. And to be honest I don’t think I pushed her that hard, I just pushed her enough to make her lose her balance. So she drops my dog and I run out of there. I grabbed my other dog. I sprained my finger and scraped my knee. But we’re all OK.”
Bradbury, California, is located in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and near the Angeles National Forest. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, bears are a common sight in the foothills when the weather is warm.
“It is always wise to give a bear as much room as you possibly can. If you see a bear in a residential community, leave the area and call 9-1-1. Bears don’t want to play, they just want humans to go away,” the sheriff’s office said in a 2013 press release. “Gatherings of people watching the bears, smelling like humans and making noises scare the bears. Once scared, they just want to go home to the forest. You can help them by going home too. Bears are wild animals and unpredictable. Mama bears are especially protective of their cubs. Did you know Black Bears can sprint up to 35 miles per hour? #BeBearAware #BearRun It’s Not a Bear Problem, It’s a People Problem.”
The Department of Fish and Wildlife provides a list of advice for dealing with bears.
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