Police chase boar inside mall
It slipped through sliding glass doors into the mall and started rummaging through the aisles.
It slipped through sliding glass doors into the mall and started rummaging through the aisles.
BERLIN, Germany (AFP) — A wild boar wandered into a Berlin shopping mall’s home decor shop on Friday, sparking a police response that drew in officers and veterinarians equipped with an anesthetic gun, wooden shields and even a blowgun but ended peacefully.
Police said they were alerted to the porcine intruder around 9 a.m. when it slipped through sliding glass doors into the mall and started rummaging through the aisles, as staff quickly vacated the shop.
Berlin’s Tierpark zoo told Agence France-Presse it deployed a team to the scene in the southeastern Koepenick district but quickly assessed “that sedating the animal was not possible due to the layout of the premises.”
Police said officers and the zoo team eventually decided it was best to drive the boar out by “constructing a path using wooden pallets,” adding that “the wild boar then returned to the forest, which we assume it came from.”
It was not the first time a wild boar has roamed built-up areas of the German capital, which is surrounded by woods. In mid-2023, a wild boar prowling the streets of southwestern Berlin sparked panic after it was briefly mistaken for a lioness.
