Cocaine Bear's premise is pretty self-explanatory, but it's actually based on true events. So what really happened in a Georgia forest in the 1980s?
You might not be surprised to learn that a film called Cocaine Bear features a bear and cocaine.
Directed by Elizabeth Banks, the dark comedy thriller follows an American black bear who embarks on "a rampage for blow and blood".Here's what you need to know about the real story that inspired the Hollywood flick.Our story starts on December 22, 1985, in the mountain town of Blue Ridge in northern Georgia.
Investigators were initially combing the forest for cocaine dropped by an airborne drug smuggler when they found a 79kg black bear had overdosed after stumbling upon a duffel bag full of the drug first. Unsurprisingly, cocaine bear was quickly picked up by the media, with the story appearing in both the New York Times and the Associated Press , among other outlets.Authorities believed the duffel bag contained cocaine that was part of a large shipment dropped in the area by Andrew Carter Thornton II on a flight from Colombia in September, AP reported.
Investigators believed Thornton, a former Kentucky narcotics officer and lawyer, intended to return to the area to get the cocaine, but he died when he parachuted from the plane with 35 kilograms of cocaine strapped to his waist.Gary Garner, of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, was quoted by AP at the time saying: "The bear got to it before we could, and he tore the duffel bag open, got him some cocaine and OD'd [overdosed].
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