re: Man killed by mountain lion over the weekend in CA: first fatal attack in ca since 2003

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Until you factor in large brains, opposable thumbs, and the ability to manufacture a 10mm Glock

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Holiday Inn Express

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Fifteen years later, just before Easter in 1986, a 5-year-old girl took a walk with her parents in a wilderness area just east of San Juan Capistrano — where she encountered a mountain lion. "There was no warning, no nothing. It grabbed her by the head and ran off with her," the girl's mother told the Los Angeles Times. "I thought I would never see her again."

Fortunately, a man who was hiking nearby, the Times reported, "used a stick to beat the cat, which released the child's head from its powerful jaws and disappeared into a thicket."

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Seven months later, a mountain lion attacked a 6-year-old boy as he walked in the same park with a group of children.

"The children ran ahead of us about 15 yards and around a curve," the boy's father told the Associated Press. 'You could hear laughing. Then all of a sudden it turned into screams."

"The mountain lion had [the boy's] head in his mouth," said the father.

"I ran at it with a knife," he said. "Right before I got to it, [the lion] released him."

In 1990, four years after mountain lions attacked these two children, California voters considered Proposition 117 — which would ban hunting mountain lions. They approved it 52.42% to 47.58%.

The proposition, of course, did not ban mountain lions from hunting humans.

Between its 1990 passage and 2022, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, mountain lions perpetrated 19 "verified" attacks on individuals in California. Three of these attacks were fatal.

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