Mountain lion kills California man in state’s first fatal attack in 20 years
A mountain lion killed a 21-year-old man and badly wounded his younger brother before officials euthanized the animal Saturday afternoon in a remote wooded area of northern California, according to authorities.
It was the state’s first fatal mountain lion attack on a person in about 20 years, statistics from California wildlife officials show.
The 18-year-old brother of the man killed Saturday called authorities about 1.10pm and said the pair were hunting for shed antlers in the Georgetown area of El Dorado county when a mountain lion attacked them, the local sheriff’s office wrote in a news release.
Deputies said the caller became separated from his brother and had “traumatic injuries” to his face as a result of the attack. Emergency responders then met the caller, provided him first aid and brought him to a hospital while deputies searched for his missing brother.
The second man was on the ground next to the crouched mountain lion when deputies said they found him and the animal at about 1.45pm. Deputies pulled their guns and fired what were essentially warning shots to scare the mountain lion away. They then approached the man in hopes of providing him first aid, but deputies realized he had died, said the release from the sheriff’s office.
Officials did not immediately release the name of either man at the center of Saturday’s attack.
An El Dorado county animal trapper as well as wardens with California’s fish and wildlife department subsequently found the mountain lion again and put it down. Once “the mountain lion was dispatched”, the trapper and wardens collected the animal’s carcass “for further examination”, sheriff’s deputies said.
Authorities said they now planned to turn their focus toward understanding why Saturday’s deadly attack happened.
“A fatality like this is extremely rare,” El Dorado sheriff’s office spokesperson Kyle Parker told the California news station KCRA.
Statistics from California’s fish and wildlife department document only 22 mountain lion-on-human attacks in the state since 1986. Four of those cases involved mountain lions killing people, according to the stats, which were last updated in May 2022.
The most recent of those attacks was in 2004 in Orange county. In that instance, a mountain lion killed competitive cyclist Mark Jeffrey Reynolds in Whiting Ranch wilderness park, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The same mountain lion which killed Reynolds was suspected of injuring a second cyclist hours later before deputies shot the animal to death.
Meanwhile, CBS News’ affiliate in Sacramento reported that the last time a mountain lion killed a person in El Dorado county prior to Saturday was in 1994.
Georgetown, California, is about 50 miles (80km) north-east of Sacramento.
Mountain lions, also known as cougars, vary in size. But, typically, they can be about 30in (76cm) in height at the shoulder, 8ft (2.4 meters) in length, and 175lbs (79kg) in weight.