RioShooter
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CajunBass wrote
See below for record of attacks. Search for alien abductions resulted in zero reports.
List of Mountain Lion Attacks On People in California
1890
19 June. (Attack #1, death #1). A 7-year-old boy was killed by two lions while playing among oak trees some distance from his home in Quartz Valley, Siskiyou County. (OC)
1891-1908
18 years with no known attacks.
1909
5 July. (Attack #2, deaths #2 and 3). A rabid lion injured a woman and child in Morgan Hill, Santa Clara County. Both died of rabies. (OC)
1910-1985
76 years with no known attacks.
1986
March. (Attack #3) A lion attacked a 5-year-old girl, Laura Small, in Caspers Regional Park, Orange County, resulting in a $2 million court judgment against Orange County. Laura remains blind in one eye and partially paralyzed. (OCR 9/29/98, OC)
October. (Attack #4) A 6-year-old boy, Justin Mellon, received minor injuries resulting from a lion attack. (OCR 9/29/98, OC)
1987-1991
5 years with no known attacks.
1992
12 March. (Attack #5) A 9-year-old boy, Darron Arroyo, was attacked by a cougar as he was hiking on a trail with his two brothers in Gaviota State Park, Santa Barbara County. His father, Steven Arroyo, about a hundred yards behind the boys, heard the screams and saw the lion dragging Darron. Steven rushed toward the cougar, picked up a rock, threw it and struck the lion between the eyes. The lion dropped the boy and retreated. Darron sustained bites to the face and head and scratches to the chest. His parents sued the State of California. (MLCSP; OC; SDUT 4/15/95, A3; Santa Barbara News Press, Gaviota State Park; California Department of Fish and Game; Abundant Wildlife Society Of North America; Mountain Lion Fact Sheet by T. R. Mader, Research Director)
1993
August. (Attack #6) A 6-year-old boy, Devin Foote, was attacked in the Manzano River area of the Los Padres National Forest, Santa Barbara County. This attack is not recognized by the California Department of Fish and Game because injuries were not verified by a physician, nor was the attack site investigated by an agency (MLCSP, SDUT 4/15/95, A3; LAT 4/3/95; United Conservation Alliance News 3(4):4-5, Oct. 1993; E. Lee Fitzhugh, personal communication 1/15/04)
September. (Attack #7) A young cougar bit a 10-year-old girl camping with her family at Paso Picacho Campground in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. The girl was slightly injured. The mountain lion believed to have attacked the girl was tracked down and killed. (SDUT 12/11/94 A1; MLCSP)
1994
23 April. (Attack #8, death #4) Barbara Schoener, 40, a friend of my sister and a long-distance runner in excellent physical shape, was killed by an 80-pound female mountain lion in Northern California on the American River Canyon trail in the Auburn State Recreation Area. No one observed the attack, and hence there are conflicting hypotheses about what occurred.
(SDUT 5/8/94, A3; 5/13/94, A3; Pete Schoener, via an email from my sister Connie Vavricek)
16 August. (Attack #9) 50-year-old Troy Winslow and his wife Robin, along with 48-year-old Kathleen Strehl, were camping in the yard of a rustic cabin near the isolated hamlet of Dos Rios in Mendocino County, when a fight broke out between their dog and a 2-year-old, 60-pound rabid female mountain lion at 4:30 a.m. The lion retreated under the cabin after they threw rocks at it. Near daybreak, the cougar attacked Kathleen, giving her four puncture wounds in the arm and knocking her to the ground. The others jumped on the cat and Robin stabbed it with a 12-inch kitchen bread knife. The cat bit off Winslow's thumb during the melee when the man grabbed the animal near its mouth. (SDUT 8/17/94, A3; OC)
10 December. (Attack #10, death #5) Iris M. Kenna, a 5-foot-4 and no more than 115 pounds, 56-year-old woman in excellent physical condition, was killed near Cuyamaca Peak at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park while hiking to Cuyamaca Peak alone in the early morning. She was attacked near the bench dedicated to her at the intersection of the Lookout Fire Road and Azalea Springs Fire Road / Fern Flat Fire Road. (SDUT 12/11/94 A1)
1995
20 March. (Attack #11) Scott Fike, a 27-year-old cyclist, was bitten and cut by a cougar near Mount Lowe in the Angeles National Forest, on 20 March 1995, and fought the cougar off with rocks. The cougar was then tracked down and killed. (SDUT 3/25/95, A3)
1996-2003
8 years with no known attacks.
2004
8 January. (Attacks #12 and 13; death #6) 35-year-old Mark Jeffrey Reynolds, an amateur mountain bike racer, was killed by a mountain lion sometime after 1:25 p.m. at Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park in southern Orange County. His bicycle was later found with the chain unbroken, but off the sprockets. Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department, speculated that Mark was attacked as he was fixing his bike
Later the same day, Anne Hjelle, 30, of Santa Ana, a former Marine who works as a fitness instructor, was jumped by the same mountain lion. Anne was attacked a short distance down the trail from Mark's body, which was not visible to her, while she was riding her mountain bicycle. The lion jumped her from a slight rise (~4 feet) on the right hand side of the trail, from under some high brush. The lion quickly had Anne's face in its mouth, despite the presence of Anne's helmet. Her riding companion, Debi Nicholls, was about 30 feet behind Anne and witnessed the attack. Debi threw her bike at the mountain lion, to no avail, then grabbed Anne's legs and screamed as the lion dragged both of them 30 feet down the slope into the brush. The lion kept attacking Anne, alternating between her helmet, face and neck. The screams brought Nils Magnuson, 33, of Long Beach, and Mike Castellano to the scene, who called 911 and scared off the mountain lion by throwing rocks at it.
Anne was airlifted to Mission Hospital. Her condition was initially critical, was upgraded from serious as of early 9 January, and to fair as of 10 January.
Later that night, Sheriff's deputies shot and killed a healthy 3- to 4-year-old, 110-122 pound male lion, which was spotted 50 yards from the man's body. Initial tests found human skin tissue, and portions of a human lung and liver in the lion's stomach, which were confirmed later to match Mark's DNA. No fibers from Anne's clothing, nor any slivers from her helmet, were found in the initial examination, but later DNA tests matched Anne to the blood on one of the lion's claws. Curiously, no deer hairball was found in the lion.
Also that night, about four miles north of these attacks, a second mountain lion, a 70 pound female, was hit by a car and killed. This lion was not involved in either attack.
Sources: an anonymous mountain biker (email of 2/3/04); Nils Magnuson (personal emails of 1/17/04 and 1/23/04), Eric Sanderson (personal emails of 1/10/04, 1/11/04, 1/16/04 and 1/26/04); L.A. Times, 1/27/04; 1/11/04 (online story); 1/10/04, A1, A19; an anonymous mountain bike rider (see below); Signon San Diego 1/9/04, 10:30 pm; L.A. Times 1/9/04, A1; CBS News / AP; KNBC-TV News Report, 11 pm, 1/8/04; L.A. Times; NBC News.
26 June. 27-year-old Shannon Parker of Santa Monica, California, was attacked by a 2-year-old male cougar at about 6:15 p.m. near the Tulare County mountain community of Johnsondale, California, about 15 to 20 miles north of Kernville. Shannon lost her right eye and suffered injuries to her other eye and deep lacerations to her right thigh.
Shannon was hiking with her boyfriend, 28-year-old Mathias Maciejewski of Los Angeles, and two other friends, Jason Quirino, 30, and Ben Aaron Marsh, 15, both of Los Angeles, on a trail near the Johnsondale Bridge, which crosses the north fork of the Kern River. The trail follows a steep, rocky area up the west side of the river. Shannon left the group to walk back toward the parking area. She was attacked at a narrow area in the trail by a perilous 100 foot precipice.
When she began to scream, the others rushed to her assistance. "They heard her scream, 'Get it off me. Get it off me,'" said Brian Naslund, acting lieutenant for Kern County with the DFG. Maciejewski used a knife to stab the mountain lion twice in the shoulder, but it had little effect, Naslund said. Quirino or Marsh went to get help while Maciejewski and the remaining hiker threw rocks at the animal. "They hit it in the head a couple of times with the rocks, it let her go," Naslund said.
The hiker who went to get help found a person in the parking area who rushed toward Johnsondale, flagging down a Forest Service ranger, said Margie Clack, a spokeswoman for Sequoia National Forest. She said Parker was fortunate help came so fast: "There's no cell phone service in that area. Sometimes we can't even get through on the Forest Service radios." There are cabins in Johnsondale used as weekend homes, but there are almost no permanent residents, stores or businesses in the area. "It's surrounded by national forest land," Clack said.
Parker was taken by ambulance that Saturday night to an airport near Lake Isabella in northeastern Kern County, where a helicopter was waiting to fly her to Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield. Doctors there stabilized her condition before sending her on to UCLA Medical Center. By the following Tuesday her condition was stable after treatment and reconstructive surgery.
Sources: (The Fresno Bee; Tim Bragg; Hiker loses eye to big cat in Sierra Mountain lion is later killed in Tulare County; 06/28/2004) (SignOnSanDiego.com, the San Diego Union-Tribune; *Mountain lion that attacked hiker was undernourished; By Greg Risling, Associated Press; 06/28/2004)
2005-2006
No reported attacks.
2007
24 January. Hiking in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park sometime before 3:00 p.m. in Humbolt County 50 miles north of Eureka in Orick, California, 70-year-old Jim Hamm was attacked by a cougar, apparently as it crept up from behind. The Fortuna, California, man was accompanied by his 65-year-old wife Nell. Both were reported as under 5'6".
According to supervising Ranger Maury Morningstar, "The wife said she didn't see the lion until she heard her husband, and when she turned around, the lion was attacking her husband."
Nell Hamm did all the right things. She approached and screamed at the lion. Then she grabbed a 4-inch-wide log and began beating it on its back. "It wouldn't let go, no matter how hard I hit it," she said.
While Jim was trying to tear at the face of the cat, Nell says, "Jim was talking to me all through this, and he said, 'I've got a pen in my pocket. Get the pen and jab him in the eye.'" "So I got the pen and tried to put it in his eye, but it didn't want to go in as easy as I thought it would." When the pen bent and became useless, Nell Hamm went back to using the log. "That lion never flinched," she said. "I just knew it was going to kill him."
Finally, Nell slammed the log butt-end into the cat's snout. The lion had ignored her until then. At last, she had its attention. With blood on it's snout from her blow, the lion let go, stepped back, an stood glaring at her with its ears pinned back. "I thought he was going to attack me," she said. She continued to scream, waving the log, and then, thankfully, the cat slipped into the ferns and disappeared.
Terrified that it might come back, Hamm told her husband that he had to get up and try to walk to the Newton B. Drury Parkway, parallel to U.S. Highway 101, to find help. He was losing blood quickly. "Somehow we made it out of there," she said.
About a quarter-mile away, they came upon an inmate work crew with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The Eureka Reporter newspaper reported this crew found the man bleeding around 4 p.m. The four men went for help. As a result, the California Department of Forestry dispatched an ambulance from Arcata, which took the couple to the Mad River Community Hospital. State Park employees also responded. Jim Hamm underwent surgery for serious lacerations to his head, legs, arms, and hands.
The Hamms are healthy, athletic people. They play sports, scuba dive and run. Since they moved to Fortuna from Camarillo two years ago, they have hiked the trails in Humboldt County, clocking 6 to 12 miles, two to three times a week. Neither of them is large; both are under 5 feet 6 inches. But they had talked about what to do in case of a mountain lion attack: Scream, look big, fight back. "We fought harder than we ever have to save his life, and we fought together," she said. Both plan to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next month (February, 2007).
Sources: (NBC11.com/San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland; Wife Saves Husband From Mountain Lion; 01/25/2007) (Yahoo! News; Mountain lion attacks hiker in Calif.; Lisa Leff, Associated Press Writer; Thu Jan 25, 11:03 PM ET) (CNN.com; Woman, 65, saves husband from mountain lion; AP; January 25, 2007) (The Eureka Reporter; Man Attacked By Mountain Lion; by Christine Bensen-Messinger; 1/25/2007) (The Times-Standard; 'I knew it was going to kill him'; John Driscoll/The Times-Standard; 01/26/2007)
I thank Linda Lewis for allowing me to reproduce her writeups of the 2004 and 2007 attacks.
See below for record of attacks. Search for alien abductions resulted in zero reports.
List of Mountain Lion Attacks On People in California
1890
19 June. (Attack #1, death #1). A 7-year-old boy was killed by two lions while playing among oak trees some distance from his home in Quartz Valley, Siskiyou County. (OC)
1891-1908
18 years with no known attacks.
1909
5 July. (Attack #2, deaths #2 and 3). A rabid lion injured a woman and child in Morgan Hill, Santa Clara County. Both died of rabies. (OC)
1910-1985
76 years with no known attacks.
1986
March. (Attack #3) A lion attacked a 5-year-old girl, Laura Small, in Caspers Regional Park, Orange County, resulting in a $2 million court judgment against Orange County. Laura remains blind in one eye and partially paralyzed. (OCR 9/29/98, OC)
October. (Attack #4) A 6-year-old boy, Justin Mellon, received minor injuries resulting from a lion attack. (OCR 9/29/98, OC)
1987-1991
5 years with no known attacks.
1992
12 March. (Attack #5) A 9-year-old boy, Darron Arroyo, was attacked by a cougar as he was hiking on a trail with his two brothers in Gaviota State Park, Santa Barbara County. His father, Steven Arroyo, about a hundred yards behind the boys, heard the screams and saw the lion dragging Darron. Steven rushed toward the cougar, picked up a rock, threw it and struck the lion between the eyes. The lion dropped the boy and retreated. Darron sustained bites to the face and head and scratches to the chest. His parents sued the State of California. (MLCSP; OC; SDUT 4/15/95, A3; Santa Barbara News Press, Gaviota State Park; California Department of Fish and Game; Abundant Wildlife Society Of North America; Mountain Lion Fact Sheet by T. R. Mader, Research Director)
1993
August. (Attack #6) A 6-year-old boy, Devin Foote, was attacked in the Manzano River area of the Los Padres National Forest, Santa Barbara County. This attack is not recognized by the California Department of Fish and Game because injuries were not verified by a physician, nor was the attack site investigated by an agency (MLCSP, SDUT 4/15/95, A3; LAT 4/3/95; United Conservation Alliance News 3(4):4-5, Oct. 1993; E. Lee Fitzhugh, personal communication 1/15/04)
September. (Attack #7) A young cougar bit a 10-year-old girl camping with her family at Paso Picacho Campground in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. The girl was slightly injured. The mountain lion believed to have attacked the girl was tracked down and killed. (SDUT 12/11/94 A1; MLCSP)
1994
23 April. (Attack #8, death #4) Barbara Schoener, 40, a friend of my sister and a long-distance runner in excellent physical shape, was killed by an 80-pound female mountain lion in Northern California on the American River Canyon trail in the Auburn State Recreation Area. No one observed the attack, and hence there are conflicting hypotheses about what occurred.
(SDUT 5/8/94, A3; 5/13/94, A3; Pete Schoener, via an email from my sister Connie Vavricek)
16 August. (Attack #9) 50-year-old Troy Winslow and his wife Robin, along with 48-year-old Kathleen Strehl, were camping in the yard of a rustic cabin near the isolated hamlet of Dos Rios in Mendocino County, when a fight broke out between their dog and a 2-year-old, 60-pound rabid female mountain lion at 4:30 a.m. The lion retreated under the cabin after they threw rocks at it. Near daybreak, the cougar attacked Kathleen, giving her four puncture wounds in the arm and knocking her to the ground. The others jumped on the cat and Robin stabbed it with a 12-inch kitchen bread knife. The cat bit off Winslow's thumb during the melee when the man grabbed the animal near its mouth. (SDUT 8/17/94, A3; OC)
10 December. (Attack #10, death #5) Iris M. Kenna, a 5-foot-4 and no more than 115 pounds, 56-year-old woman in excellent physical condition, was killed near Cuyamaca Peak at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park while hiking to Cuyamaca Peak alone in the early morning. She was attacked near the bench dedicated to her at the intersection of the Lookout Fire Road and Azalea Springs Fire Road / Fern Flat Fire Road. (SDUT 12/11/94 A1)
1995
20 March. (Attack #11) Scott Fike, a 27-year-old cyclist, was bitten and cut by a cougar near Mount Lowe in the Angeles National Forest, on 20 March 1995, and fought the cougar off with rocks. The cougar was then tracked down and killed. (SDUT 3/25/95, A3)
1996-2003
8 years with no known attacks.
2004
8 January. (Attacks #12 and 13; death #6) 35-year-old Mark Jeffrey Reynolds, an amateur mountain bike racer, was killed by a mountain lion sometime after 1:25 p.m. at Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park in southern Orange County. His bicycle was later found with the chain unbroken, but off the sprockets. Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department, speculated that Mark was attacked as he was fixing his bike
Later the same day, Anne Hjelle, 30, of Santa Ana, a former Marine who works as a fitness instructor, was jumped by the same mountain lion. Anne was attacked a short distance down the trail from Mark's body, which was not visible to her, while she was riding her mountain bicycle. The lion jumped her from a slight rise (~4 feet) on the right hand side of the trail, from under some high brush. The lion quickly had Anne's face in its mouth, despite the presence of Anne's helmet. Her riding companion, Debi Nicholls, was about 30 feet behind Anne and witnessed the attack. Debi threw her bike at the mountain lion, to no avail, then grabbed Anne's legs and screamed as the lion dragged both of them 30 feet down the slope into the brush. The lion kept attacking Anne, alternating between her helmet, face and neck. The screams brought Nils Magnuson, 33, of Long Beach, and Mike Castellano to the scene, who called 911 and scared off the mountain lion by throwing rocks at it.
Anne was airlifted to Mission Hospital. Her condition was initially critical, was upgraded from serious as of early 9 January, and to fair as of 10 January.
Later that night, Sheriff's deputies shot and killed a healthy 3- to 4-year-old, 110-122 pound male lion, which was spotted 50 yards from the man's body. Initial tests found human skin tissue, and portions of a human lung and liver in the lion's stomach, which were confirmed later to match Mark's DNA. No fibers from Anne's clothing, nor any slivers from her helmet, were found in the initial examination, but later DNA tests matched Anne to the blood on one of the lion's claws. Curiously, no deer hairball was found in the lion.
Also that night, about four miles north of these attacks, a second mountain lion, a 70 pound female, was hit by a car and killed. This lion was not involved in either attack.
Sources: an anonymous mountain biker (email of 2/3/04); Nils Magnuson (personal emails of 1/17/04 and 1/23/04), Eric Sanderson (personal emails of 1/10/04, 1/11/04, 1/16/04 and 1/26/04); L.A. Times, 1/27/04; 1/11/04 (online story); 1/10/04, A1, A19; an anonymous mountain bike rider (see below); Signon San Diego 1/9/04, 10:30 pm; L.A. Times 1/9/04, A1; CBS News / AP; KNBC-TV News Report, 11 pm, 1/8/04; L.A. Times; NBC News.
26 June. 27-year-old Shannon Parker of Santa Monica, California, was attacked by a 2-year-old male cougar at about 6:15 p.m. near the Tulare County mountain community of Johnsondale, California, about 15 to 20 miles north of Kernville. Shannon lost her right eye and suffered injuries to her other eye and deep lacerations to her right thigh.
Shannon was hiking with her boyfriend, 28-year-old Mathias Maciejewski of Los Angeles, and two other friends, Jason Quirino, 30, and Ben Aaron Marsh, 15, both of Los Angeles, on a trail near the Johnsondale Bridge, which crosses the north fork of the Kern River. The trail follows a steep, rocky area up the west side of the river. Shannon left the group to walk back toward the parking area. She was attacked at a narrow area in the trail by a perilous 100 foot precipice.
When she began to scream, the others rushed to her assistance. "They heard her scream, 'Get it off me. Get it off me,'" said Brian Naslund, acting lieutenant for Kern County with the DFG. Maciejewski used a knife to stab the mountain lion twice in the shoulder, but it had little effect, Naslund said. Quirino or Marsh went to get help while Maciejewski and the remaining hiker threw rocks at the animal. "They hit it in the head a couple of times with the rocks, it let her go," Naslund said.
The hiker who went to get help found a person in the parking area who rushed toward Johnsondale, flagging down a Forest Service ranger, said Margie Clack, a spokeswoman for Sequoia National Forest. She said Parker was fortunate help came so fast: "There's no cell phone service in that area. Sometimes we can't even get through on the Forest Service radios." There are cabins in Johnsondale used as weekend homes, but there are almost no permanent residents, stores or businesses in the area. "It's surrounded by national forest land," Clack said.
Parker was taken by ambulance that Saturday night to an airport near Lake Isabella in northeastern Kern County, where a helicopter was waiting to fly her to Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield. Doctors there stabilized her condition before sending her on to UCLA Medical Center. By the following Tuesday her condition was stable after treatment and reconstructive surgery.
Sources: (The Fresno Bee; Tim Bragg; Hiker loses eye to big cat in Sierra Mountain lion is later killed in Tulare County; 06/28/2004) (SignOnSanDiego.com, the San Diego Union-Tribune; *Mountain lion that attacked hiker was undernourished; By Greg Risling, Associated Press; 06/28/2004)
2005-2006
No reported attacks.
2007
24 January. Hiking in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park sometime before 3:00 p.m. in Humbolt County 50 miles north of Eureka in Orick, California, 70-year-old Jim Hamm was attacked by a cougar, apparently as it crept up from behind. The Fortuna, California, man was accompanied by his 65-year-old wife Nell. Both were reported as under 5'6".
According to supervising Ranger Maury Morningstar, "The wife said she didn't see the lion until she heard her husband, and when she turned around, the lion was attacking her husband."
Nell Hamm did all the right things. She approached and screamed at the lion. Then she grabbed a 4-inch-wide log and began beating it on its back. "It wouldn't let go, no matter how hard I hit it," she said.
While Jim was trying to tear at the face of the cat, Nell says, "Jim was talking to me all through this, and he said, 'I've got a pen in my pocket. Get the pen and jab him in the eye.'" "So I got the pen and tried to put it in his eye, but it didn't want to go in as easy as I thought it would." When the pen bent and became useless, Nell Hamm went back to using the log. "That lion never flinched," she said. "I just knew it was going to kill him."
Finally, Nell slammed the log butt-end into the cat's snout. The lion had ignored her until then. At last, she had its attention. With blood on it's snout from her blow, the lion let go, stepped back, an stood glaring at her with its ears pinned back. "I thought he was going to attack me," she said. She continued to scream, waving the log, and then, thankfully, the cat slipped into the ferns and disappeared.
Terrified that it might come back, Hamm told her husband that he had to get up and try to walk to the Newton B. Drury Parkway, parallel to U.S. Highway 101, to find help. He was losing blood quickly. "Somehow we made it out of there," she said.
About a quarter-mile away, they came upon an inmate work crew with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The Eureka Reporter newspaper reported this crew found the man bleeding around 4 p.m. The four men went for help. As a result, the California Department of Forestry dispatched an ambulance from Arcata, which took the couple to the Mad River Community Hospital. State Park employees also responded. Jim Hamm underwent surgery for serious lacerations to his head, legs, arms, and hands.
The Hamms are healthy, athletic people. They play sports, scuba dive and run. Since they moved to Fortuna from Camarillo two years ago, they have hiked the trails in Humboldt County, clocking 6 to 12 miles, two to three times a week. Neither of them is large; both are under 5 feet 6 inches. But they had talked about what to do in case of a mountain lion attack: Scream, look big, fight back. "We fought harder than we ever have to save his life, and we fought together," she said. Both plan to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next month (February, 2007).
Sources: (NBC11.com/San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland; Wife Saves Husband From Mountain Lion; 01/25/2007) (Yahoo! News; Mountain lion attacks hiker in Calif.; Lisa Leff, Associated Press Writer; Thu Jan 25, 11:03 PM ET) (CNN.com; Woman, 65, saves husband from mountain lion; AP; January 25, 2007) (The Eureka Reporter; Man Attacked By Mountain Lion; by Christine Bensen-Messinger; 1/25/2007) (The Times-Standard; 'I knew it was going to kill him'; John Driscoll/The Times-Standard; 01/26/2007)
I thank Linda Lewis for allowing me to reproduce her writeups of the 2004 and 2007 attacks.
