A mountain lion attacked and severely injured a bicyclist in an
Orange County park and may have killed a man whose body was found
nearby, authorities said.
Staff and Wire Reports
A mountain lion attacked and severely injured a bicyclist in an Orange County park and may have killed a man whose body was found nearby, authorities said.
The 2-year-old male cat, which weighed about 110 pounds, was later shot and killed, and its body was taken to a laboratory for testing, said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the California Fish and Game Department.
This latest incident is drawing more resident and police attention to mountain lion sightings in Gilroy, as the city urbanizes its northwest quad, pushing more and more into the open space that is the habitat of the feline.
Dean and Katherine Filice say they’ve seen a 140-pound or larger mountain lion three times in the past three months at the gate of their home in the Bridalwood Development in the Country Estates area. As recently as Friday morning, the apparently hungry cat was searching for food – something the Filice’s don’t want their 5-year-old German Shepherd to become.
“Given the news in (Southern California) it made us a little more concerned,” Katherine Filice said. “There are a lot of new residents out here. Our goal is to notify them that they need to be careful. We’re not trying to be sensationalist. We don’t want to see the mountain lion shot.”
Filice said she reported this morning’s sighting to Gilroy police who will follow up with her today. Filice is asking the department to issue a warning to residents, especially those who go out around dawn and dusk to their cars and to check mail.
“We make sure we’re not alone when we go out to our car in the morning,” Filice said.
Mountain lions sightings are not isolated to the northwest quad. As recently as Wednesday night a lion was spotted on the prowl outside a Gavilan College basketball game.
The school had to interrupt the game to announce that anyone leaving should not do so unaccompanied since the mountain lion could be lurking nearby.
As for the Southern California incident, Anne Hjelle had been riding with a friend in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park shortly before dusk Thursday when the mountain lion attacked her, said Orange County Fire Capt. Stephen Miller.
The lion pounced on the 30-year-old’s back, grabbed her by her head and began dragging her, said her friend, Debbie Nichols. Nichols said she screamed for help and grabbed Hjelle’s legs in a struggle to free her.
“He dragged us down … about 100 yards into the brush and I just kept screaming,” Nichols said. “This guy would not let go. He had a hold of her face.”
Other cyclists in the area threw rocks at the animal until it fled.
Hjelle was airlifted to Mission Hospital, where her condition was upgraded to serious early Friday, a nursing supervisor said. She had been listed as critical.
After the attack, the body of an unidentified man in his 30s was found at the top of a trail near a bicycle. Authorities weren’t sure how long he had been there and couldn’t confirm if the man was killed by the mountain lion, but Miller said, “it’s pretty obvious that an animal was involved.” An autopsy was planned Friday.
Authorities said a second mountain lion in the area was hit by a car and killed late Thursday and would also be tested.
Including Thursday’s incident, there have been 13 mountain lion attacks on humans in California over the past 114 years, five of them fatal, said Doug Updike, a biologist with the state Fish and Game Department.
Last September, game wardens shot and wounded an aggressive mountain lion spotted near an equestrian center in San Juan Capistrano. The lion was later found and killed, state officials said.
In 1986, 5-year-old Laura Small was attacked while looking for tadpoles with her mother in Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park in Orange County. The girl’s skull was partially crushed and she was left blind in one eye and paralyzed on her right side.
A 6-year-old boy was mauled in the same park a few months later. County supervisors closed most of the park to children for nearly a decade afterward.
Updike estimates there are between 4,000 and 6,000 adult lions roaming the Golden State, with usually five to seven mountain lions per 100 square miles. State law prohibits hunting or killing them.
Staff writer Eric Leins contributed to this report.
