Man fought off a mountain lion weeks before a suspected fatal Colorado attack

A lone hiker who authorities say was killed by a mountain lion on a remote Colorado trail on New Year’s Day was not the first person to encounter one of the area’s predators in recent weeks.

Gary Messina said he was running along the same trail on a dark November morning when his headlamp caught the glow of two eyes in the nearby brush. Messina used his phone to take a quick photo before a mountain lion rushed him.

Messina said he threw the phone at the animal, kicked the dirt and screamed as the lion continued to try to circle behind him. After a few painful minutes, he broke a bat-sized stick on a fallen log, hit the lion in the head with it and it ran away, he said.

The woman whose body was found Thursday on the same Crosier Mountain trail had “injuries consistent with a mountain lion attack,” said Kara Van Hoose of Colorado Parks and Wildlife. An autopsy is scheduled for next week, said Rafael Moreno of the Larimer County coroner’s office.

Thursday evening, wildlife officials found and killed two mountain lions in the area – one at the scene and another nearby. A necropsy will help determine whether one or both animals attacked the woman and whether they were suffering from neurological illnesses such as rabies or bird flu.

A search for a third mountain lion reported in the area was underway Friday, Van Hoose said. Nearby trails remained closed as the hunt continued. Van Hoose said circumstances would determine whether that lion would also be killed.

Based on the aggressiveness of the animal that attacked him on November 11, Messina suspects it could be the same animal that killed the woman on New Year’s Day.

“I had to fight him because he was basically trying to mutilate me,” Messina told the Associated Press. “I was afraid for my life and I couldn’t escape. I tried to back away and he was trying to lunge at me.”

The 32-year-old man from Glen Haven, Colo., reported his encounter to wildlife officials a few days later, who posted signs warning people of the animal’s presence along trails in the Crosier Mountain area northeast of Estes Park, Van Hoose said. The signs were later removed, she said.

Mountain lion sightings in this area east of Rocky Mountain National Park are common, Van Hoose said, because it provides good habitat for the animals: It is isolated with thick forests, rocky outcrops and many elevation changes.

Still, attacks on humans by animals are rare, and the last suspected fatal encounter in Colorado was in 1999, when a 3-year-old boy disappeared into the wild and his tattered clothes were found more than three years later. In 1997, a 10-year-old boy was killed by a lion and taken while hiking with family members in Rocky Mountain National Park.

On Thursday, two hikers saw the victim’s body on the trail around noon, about 100 yards (yards) away, Van Hoose said. A mountain lion was nearby and they threw rocks to scare it away. One of the hikers, a medic, tended to the victim but did not find a pulse, Van Hoose said.

The victim will be publicly identified after the autopsy carried out by the coroner, who must also provide the cause of death.

Mountain lions – also known as cougars, pumas or catamounts – can weigh 130 pounds (60 kilograms) and measure more than 6 feet (1.8 meters) long. They mainly eat deer.

Colorado has approximately 3,800 to 4,400 animals, which are classified as big game species in the state and can be hunted.

Thursday’s killing would be the fourth fatal mountain lion attack in North America in the past decade, and the 30th since 1868, according to information from the California-based Mountain Lion Foundation. Not all of these deaths have been confirmed to be mountain lion attacks.

Most attacks occur during the day and when humans are active in lion territories, indicating that the animals are not searching for their victims, according to the advocacy group. About 15% of attacks are fatal.

“As more people live, work and recreate in areas that overlap with wildlife habitat, interactions may increase, not because mountain lions become more aggressive, but because the overlap increases,” said Byron Weckworth, the foundation’s conservation manager.

To reduce the risk of traveling in groups, keep children close and avoid dawn and dusk when lions are most active, Weckworth said. When meeting, maintain eye contact with the lion, make yourself appear larger, and back away slowly; don’t run, he said.

Last year in Northern California, two brothers were stalked and attacked by a lion that they tried to fight off. One of the brothers was killed.