A Southern California family’s Labor Day weekend picnic turned into a terrifying ordeal when a mountain lion attacked a 5-year-old boy and tried to drag him into the woods, prompting his relatives to rescue him from the wild animal’s jaws, authorities said.
The brazen attack unfolded at 4:21 p.m. local time Sunday in Malibu Creek State Park, about 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, and left the child with “significant but non-life-threatening injuries,” according to a statement from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
A family of six adults and several children from Woodland Hills, California, was having a picnic at the park in the Santa Monica Mountains when the large cougar suddenly appeared and snatched the boy as his family and witnesses watched in horror, according to the statement.
Malibu Creek State Park in Malibu, Calif.
Adobe Stock
“The children were playing in the immediate vicinity of the family’s picnic table when the mountain lion attacked the boy,” fish and wildlife officials said. “One or more adults charged at the lion, and it released the boy.”
The child, whose name was not released, suffered bite and scratch wounds and was airlifted to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where he was treated and released, officials said.
“Multiple witnesses saw the attack and observed the mountain lion climb up a nearby tree,” according to the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Stock photo of a mountain lion.
Carol Gray/Adobe Stock
When state park rangers and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies arrived, officials said the mountain lion was still in the tree.
The CDFW “deemed the mountain lion a threat to public safety” and park rangers euthanized the animal by shooting it, officials said.
Per standard protocol, wildlife officers went to Northridge Hospital Medical Center and obtained evidence samples of the bite and scratch wounds on the child, and from his clothing, officials said.
“Those samples were confirmed a DNA match by the CDFW’s Wildlife Forensic Lab in Sacramento,” officials said.
The incident comes after a 21-year-old man was killed by a cougar that attacked him and his 18-year-old in May in Northern California’s El Dorado National Forest, about 52 miles northeast of Sacramento. Officials said it was the first fatal mountain lion attack in the state in 20 years.
Since 1890, fewer than 50 mountain lion attacks on humans have been reported in California, including six that have been fatal, officials said.