Suspected deadly mountain lion attack in Colorado is not the first such harrowing encounter

The General Store is seen Oct. 24, 2006, in Glen Haven, Colo. (AP Photo/The Denver Post, Karl Gehring, File)

A solo hiker who authorities believe was killed by a mountain lion on a remote Colorado trail on New Year’s Day was not the first person to encounter a big cat in the area in recent weeks.

Gary Messina said he was running along the same trail on a dark November morning when his headlamp caught the gleam of two eyes in the nearby brush. Messina pulled out his phone and snapped a quick photo before a mountain lion rushed him.

Messina said he threw his phone at the animal, kicked dirt and yelled as the lion kept trying to circle behind him. After a couple of harrowing minutes he broke a bat-sized stick off a downed log, hit the lion in the head with it and it ran off, he said.

The woman whose body was found Thursday on the same Crosier Mountain trail had “wounds consistent with a mountain lion attack,” said Kara Van Hoose with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Officials were awaiting confirmation.

Wildlife officials later tracked down and killed two mountain lions in the area — one at the scene and another nearby. A necropsy will determine if either or both of those animals attacked the woman.

A search for a third mountain lion reported in the area was ongoing Friday, Van Hoose said. Trails in the area remained closed while the hunt for the animal continued. Van Hoose said circumstances would dictate whether that lion also is killed.

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

“I had to fight it off because it was basically trying to maul me,” Messina told The Associated Press. “I was scared for my life and I wasn’t able to escape. I tried backing up and it would try to lunge at me.”

The 32-year-old man from nearby Glen Haven, Colorado, reported his encounter to wildlife officials days later who posted signs to warn people about the animal along trails in the Crosier Mountain area northeast of Estes Park, Van Hoose said. Those signs were later removed.

Mountain lion sightings in that area east of Rocky Mountain National Park are common, Van Hoose said, because it offers good habitat for the big cats: It’s remote with thick forests, rocky outcroppings and lots of elevation changes.

Yet attacks by the animals are rare, and the last suspected fatal encounter in Colorado was in 1999, when a 3-year-old was killed. Two years before that, a 10-year-old boy was killed by a lion and dragged away while hiking with family members in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Two hikers on Thursday saw the victim’s body on the trail at around noon from about 100 yards away, Van Hoose said. A mountain lion was nearby and they threw rocks to scare it away. One of the hikers, a physician, attended to the victim but did not find a pulse, Van Hoose said.

Formal identification of the victim was pending with the Larimer County Coroner, who is also expected to provide a cause of death.

Mountain lions — also known as cougars, pumas or catamounts — can weigh 130 pounds (60 kilograms) and grow to more than six feet (1.8meters) long. They primarily eat deer.

Colorado has an estimated 3,800-4,400 of the animals, which are classified as a big game species in the state and can be hunted.

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.

Matthew Brown, The Associated Press