Mountain lion attack leaves six-year-old
California boy injured
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[September 08, 2014]
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A mountain lion
attacked and injured a 6-year-old boy hiking with family and friends on
Sunday along a wooded trail in California's Silicon Valley before two
adults managed to frighten the cat away, a state wildlife official said.
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The attack occurred at about 1 p.m. local time in an open-space
preserve adjacent to the historic Picchetti Ranch Winery just west
of the town of Cupertino, said Lieutenant Patrick Foy of the state
Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The victim's parents reported that the child was walking about 10
feet ahead of the rest of the group - two adult couples each hiking
with their three small children - when "the mountain lion came out
of nowhere" and grabbed the boy.
The lion, also known as a cougar, broke off its attack and vanished
back into the woods when the two men in the group lunged at the cat
shouting to scare it away, Foy told Reuters.
He said the 6-year-old boy suffered bite wounds and scratches to his
upper body, head and neck.
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The boy's injuries were not life-threatening but serious enough that
he was hospitalized, Foy said. The Los Angeles Times reported the
boy was listed in fair condition.
A team of sheriff's deputies and officers of the fish and wildlife
agency combed the surrounding area until dark with search dogs
seeking to track down the lion. They planned to resume the search on
Monday morning, Foy said.
If the animal is captured and its DNA matches saliva samples on the
boy's clothing, the mountain lion will be killed. "We have a lion
that has attacked a human being and is a very clear threat to public
safety that needs to be removed," Foy said.
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Mountain lions are solitary, elusive creatures that tend to avoid
people, and attacks on humans are fairly rare. Before Sunday, state
wildlife authorities had documented 13 such attacks dating back to
March of 1986, three of them fatal.
The most recent previous victim was a 63-year-old man who survived a
cougar attack during a camping trip near the Yuba River in the
Sierra Nevada, according to the Fish and Wildlife Department's
website.
More than half of California is considered prime mountain lion
habitat, and an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 cougars roam statewide.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
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