They were on vacation in Lake Tahoe when a bear broke into their vehicle, damaged the gear shift and crashed the car.
The McCarthy family says the proof is in the pictures - the inside of their Toyota Prius is trashed.
"He had ripped out the back seat," Cece McCarthy said. "There's nothing left. There's nothing left inside of our Prius. Gone."
The "he" Cece is talking about is a bear. Somehow, the animal got into the parked car in front of their Lake Tahoe vacation home. A honking horn woke them up in the middle of the night. The bear was trapped inside struggling to get out.
"It was really rocking. The car was rocking," Brian McCarthy said.
Brian called 911, and when the family looked out the window again, the Prius was gone.
"The car is gone. The bear's gotten the car in neutral. He just ripped the gears shift down," Brian said.
The frustrated bear in the front seat went in reverse down the steep 25-foot driveway.
"[The bear] was probably thinking 'Why can't I get out of here? What's happening?' It would be like being swept in a river downstream but there's no water," Brian said.
The Prius slammed into a neighbors' front yard. Several boulders on the lawn stopped the car from hitting the home. Somehow, the bear was able to free himself from the car never to be seen again.
"There's no locking mechanism. Nothing. So, he must have gone right through because there's no paneling left on the door," Brian said.
But the bear left his mark, tearing up the nice interior and turning it into a pile of junk.
"I still can't figure out how he spent all that time in that car and did all that damage without ever breaking a window," Brian said.
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