“At 1:13pm, the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office received a 911 call indicating that two people had been attacked by a mountain lion,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release. “This occurred in a remote part of El Dorado County near Georgetown, CA.
“Unfortunately, there is one individual who was mortally wounded during the attack. The other individual who was attacked suffered injuries and was taken to a local area hospital for treatment. More information will be provided as it becomes available.”
Further details were not immediately available and a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
However, the department’s listing of verified mountain lion attacks on humans indicates the last fatal attack in California occurred in January 2004 in Whiting Ranch Regional Park in Orange County.
News accounts from that incident indicate a 35-year-old cyclist named Mark Reynolds was killed after he stopped to fix his bicycle chain and was attacked.
The last fatal attack in Northern California occurred in the Auburn State Recreation Area in El Dorado County April 23, 1994, when 40-year-old Barbara Schoener was attacked in Auburn Lake Trails.
At the time, Schoener was the first person killed by a mountain lion in the state since 1909, The Bee previously reported.