Another Trial Nears for Girl Mauled by Cougar in 1986

Five years ago, Laura Small, a bright and friendly preschooler looking for tadpoles in Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park, was attacked by a mountain lion, her skull crushed by the feline’s powerful jaws.

A hiker grabbed a stick and poked the cat in the eyes until it dropped the 5-year-old El Toro girl and fled.

Laura, now 10, miraculously survived the mauling, but was blinded in one eye, partially paralyzed and left to cope with an assortment of painful physical and emotional scars.

No one denies that Laura’s life has forever been changed by the March 23, 1986, incident. What is being debated is whether anyone is to blame.

On Monday, after years of legal wrangling, a lawsuit pursued by Laura’s family will go before a Superior Court jury, which will decide if Orange County was negligent.

Most lawsuits such as this one are generally settled out of court. But in this case both parties have been unyielding in their positions.

“The bottom line is that (the county) can’t be liable for the acts of a wild mountain lion,” said Barry Allen, the county’s attorney. “They shouldn’t be able to sue, that’s our feeling.”

The Small family sees it differently. “The county’s not responsible for the mountain lion’s action, but for its own actions and its inability to warn the public about the dangers in the park,” said the family’s attorney, Wylie A. Aitken.

The Smalls contend in their lawsuit that park officials knew about the danger of cougars, but presented an image to the public, orally and in brochures, that the area was safe and that the cougars had a “healthy aversion to humans.”

Further, the lawsuit alleges, wild animals were, in effect, lured into close contact with the public by the county’s placement of water, shrubbery and eating places around the park.

Aitken has said that park officials had conversations with state authorities and even circulated an internal memo about several menacing mountain lion sightings, acknowledging that there was a problem.

“If you know of any known danger, you have a duty to warn the public,” Aitken said. “And they knew there was a danger.”

County officials have denied any wrongdoing. Allen said that county officials knew there were mountain lions, but to their knowledge, “a mountain lion had never attacked a human in California.”

Allen said county officials were having discussions with state authorities about the cougar sightings, but they were still unaware of any danger. Additionally, he said, the cougars “belonged to the state. They were the state’s mountain lions and we couldn’t do anything with them.”

The family, which is seeking unspecified damages, hopes that the lawsuit will force “the county to take responsibility for the attack,” said Laura’s mother, Susan Mattern-Small.

Laura said she is not too interested in the outcome of the trial and has no plans for any money she might win, other then using it to pay for college and medical school so she can become a neurosurgeon.

“I’m just tired of going through this. It will be nice when it’s over,” she said. “I waited so long that I really don’t care anymore. . . . If we win that’s great. In general I don’t care.”

Despite sustaining massive head injuries, Laura, who is expected to testify, vividly remembers parts of the horrifying attack.

In an emotionless account, she said she and her mother were searching for tadpoles in a stream in the park, which is near San Juan Capistrano, when she heard rustling in a bush. “I thought it was a bunny rabbit at first,” she said.

The next thing she recalls is the cougar “dragging me all on the ground and there were a whole bunch of thorns, and I got thorns in my knees and stuff, and my mom started screaming.

“A man we didn’t know came up with a stick and poked the mountain lion in the eyes until it dropped me. . . . I thought it was a big dog that had gotten me.”

Since the mauling, Laura has undergone 15 operations and is expected to have several others, including a couple this summer to stretch hair-bearing scalp over scarred areas of her head. Until several years ago, she had to constantly wear a bicycle helmet to protect an exposed portion of her brain where her skull bone had been smashed. She has had a plastic plate implanted to cover the hole. “It’s bulletproof,” she said with a smile.

She has struggled to cope with paralysis of her right leg and arm, which makes it difficult for her to participate in baseball, tag and other sports she enjoys. “I really like to play sports and stuff, but I can’t really. I have trouble playing very good,” she said.

But perhaps the cruelest obstacle she has had to overcome has been the teasing about her condition from schoolmates at Olivewood Elementary School.

“Some of the kids make fun of me a lot and call me ‘Mountain Lion Girl’ and things like that,” she said. “I don’t pay attention to it anymore. It used to bother me a lot and I would get all mad, but now I don’t really care.”

Mattern-Small said her child’s ordeal has been an emotional strain on the whole family. “You just go day to day, just trying to get through it.”

Laura, however, is determined not to let any of her disabilities get her down and eagerly pursues activities such as ballet, horseback riding and playing with her dog, Ebony. And despite the taunts, she has managed to do well in school. Recently, she won a districtwide writing contest for a book of poems she wrote.

There are still some things that make her a little uneasy, she admits. She does not like pit bull terriers and her idea of camping now is hiking by day and sleeping in a motel by night. And, she said, she has no interest in ever going back to Caspers Wilderness Park.