WEEK IN REVIEW : Major Events, Images And People in Orange County News : AT THE SCENE : Mountain Lion’s Attacks, Mauls Child on Hike

The sight was as horrifying as it was unexpected--a parent’s nightmare. “Every time I close my eyes I see the whole thing over again,” said Susan Mattern-Small of El Toro.

She and her daughter Laura, 5, who were on an afternoon hike near a nature trail in Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park, waded into a shallow creek to search for tadpoles. When Laura wandered onto the stream bank, something big and buff-colored lunged at her from the thicket.

It was a mountain lion, and before Mattern-Small’s eyes, it clamped its fangs into Laura’s head and dragged her off into the thicket.

The mother’s screams brought her husband, and they rushed off in different directions in frantic search.

Her screams also brought Gregory Ysais, a 36-year-old electronics technician from Mission Viejo, who had brought his family to the park for a hike. Ysais plunged into the brush and came upon the lion, still with the child in its jaws.

“He had it by the back of the neck and was trying to keep a good grip on it. The child was squirming. I could see the head was cut pretty bad. She was quite bloody,” Ysais said.

Ysais broke off a large limb and began swinging it at the lion. The cat, trying to keep hold of the child, swiped at Ysais and the branch with one forepaw, then dropped the child and eventually retreated out of sight.

It could have taken several minutes, perhaps only a few seconds; Ysais couldn’t say. “All I could think of was getting the child back,” he said.

A sheriff’s helicopter flew the girl to Mission Community Hospital, where she underwent 12 hours of emergency surgery. Four days later she was reported in serious condition with some brain and eye damage and partial paralysis, but doctors said she was likely to survive and was regaining some of her lost faculties.

Park rangers evacuated the 7,500-acre park and closed it while they hunted for the mountain lion. On the following day, dogs brought in for the hunt treed a mountain lion, and after a futile attempt to drug the cat, it was shot dead. Rangers said its paws matched paw prints found at the scene of the attack.

It was the first documented attack by a mountain lion on a person in California history, state Department of Fish and Game officials said, and veterinarians and wildlife biologists studying the animal’s carcass said they could not explain the attack.

The cat was not rabid, and though small--it weighed only 65 pounds when a male its age would normally weigh more than 100--it did not appear to be suffering from hunger. Nor did it show the usual signs of once being a pet turned loose in the wild, they said.

Ron Hein, state Fish and Game Department wildlife manager in Orange and other counties, said he was not very surprised by the attack. He said development of lands on the edge of the wilderness is bringing man closer to the big cats.

Three times last year, mountain lions were found in populated areas, though no attacks resulted.

At the same time, the lion population seems to be increasing in the nearby mountains of Orange County. Wildlife biologists estimated that 26 to 35 adult mountain lions may now be roaming those areas.

“We’re probably going to have more of these incidents,” Hein said.

Park officials, who had reopened the park after the lion was shot, announced they would close it again for at least 10 days to be certain no other lions were in the vicinity.