Authorities Fear Cougar Took Boy

Authorities seeking a missing 3-year-old boy said Tuesday that the child may have been dragged away by a mountain lion about half a mile from where he disappeared in the rugged mountain community of Pinyon Pines in Riverside County.

The possibility that Travis Zweig of La Quinta may have been attacked by a cougar was based on prints of shoes similar to those worn by the lost boy and paw impressions “about the size of a pretty big man’s fist,” sheriff’s Sgt. Craig Kilday said.

Trackers followed the shoe impressions to the top of a ridge where they stopped beneath a rock ledge, Kilday said.

“There’s an abrupt stop of the shoe impressions,” the sergeant said from a search command post. “Then there are marks of a violent slide, and then past the slide marks, there are drag marks and cat paw impressions.”

But, Kilday added, “this is all theory.”

The search for Travis continued, he said Tuesday night.

The boy disappeared about 10:30 a.m. Sunday from a Pinyon Pines cabin, a quarter-mile down a dirt road from California 74 in the San Jacinto Mountains between Hemet and Palm Springs. His father, Kevin, was helping a family friend chop wood at the friend’s cabin at the time.

The 3-foot, 35-pound child had been playing in the yard with four pet dogs shortly before his father noticed that the boy and the animals were missing. The dogs returned within half an hour, but the child could not be found.

More than 50 rescue workers from a dozen Southern California law enforcement agencies, search-and-rescue teams and volunteers joined the family’s search and combed a two-square-mile area at about 3,500 feet elevation.

When Travis disappeared, he was dressed only in a T-shirt and denim jeans. The region was hit by freezing rain and snow and 50-m.p.h. winds Sunday night. Overnight temperatures since then have been below freezing.