A mountain lion killed a 21-year-old man and mauled his 18-year-old brother in El Dorado County, east of Sacramento, California, in the first such fatal attack in the state since 2004.
Mountain lions typically avoid humans; one emerged outside the home of this writer in Los Angeles in October 2022 and retreated without incident.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported:
The brothers had been out hunting for shed antlers in a remote area of Darling Ridge Road and Skid Road when the attack happened. The 18-year-old called 911 at 1:13 p.m. saying he and his brother were attacked and he was suffering traumatic injuries to his face, the sheriff’s office said. He said he had been separated from his older brother during the attack, according to the sheriff’s office.
Authorities and paramedics arrived at the scene about 20 minutes later. They began treating the 18-year-old and searching for the 21-year-old.
Sheriff’s Office deputies found the older brother on the ground about 10 minutes later, with the mountain lion crouched beside him. The deputies discharged their weapons to scare off the mountain lion, but when they got to the man, he was dead, according to the sheriff’s office.
The mountain lion was later killed.
Mountain lions are far more likely to be killed by humans than the reverse. In 2022, officials euthanized a famous mountain lion known as P-22, which lived in the hills above Hollywood, after it had been hit by a car and injured.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.