Police Kill Lion in Santa Paula Yard

Police officers were forced to kill a mountain lion in a Santa Paula neighborhood Wednesday, about the time a search was called off in Point Mugu State Park for a lion that had approached hikers there over the weekend.

A family at 511 N. Mill St. in Santa Paula woke up to find the cat sleeping in the backyard shortly after 7 a.m.

“At first they thought it was a dog, and then they took another look and it was a mountain lion,” Santa Paula Police Cmdr. Mark Hanson said.

About a dozen Santa Paula police officers, three California Department of Fish and Game officers and officials from Ventura County and Santa Paula animal control responded to the scene.

While the cougar slept and at other times wandered around the fenced yard, the officials spent four hours surrounding the area and strategizing before deciding to tranquilize the large cat and move it to its natural habitat.

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Shortly after 11 a.m., fish and game department officers shot the lion with a tranquilizer gun.

Not fully sedated after a minute, the cougar bolted toward the front of the house and nearby streets. Two Santa Paula police officers then shot and killed the lion to prevent it from running into the neighborhood and toward nearby McKevette Elementary School, where children had been kept inside all morning.

“Just because the dart hit the animal, you can’t be 100% certain that the dart injected the tranquilizer,” Hanson said.

The mountain lion’s body was taken to a lab in San Bernardino for necropsy. It was a 110-pound male, probably 1 1/2 to 3 years old. Its lethargic behavior in the yard may have been a sign that the animal was ill, said Capt. Roger Reese of the fish and game department.

Phyllis Taylor, whose daughter first noticed the cat in their yard, said that Wednesday was the first time she had seen a mountain lion, except for on television.

“It’s a beautiful animal in its place,” she said. Taylor’s next-door neighbor, Diana Jones, said officers told her to stay in one room of her house as they stood in her backyard.

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“They were very considerate of the citizens and I just felt badly the way it ended for them,” Jones said. “They have to make the call, and it’s not an easy one I’m sure.”

Reese said, “We really did make an attempt to tranquilize it. Up until that point, it wasn’t a lion that we considered a public safety hazard.”

He said it is unlikely that the mountain lion killed in Santa Paula was the same animal that trackers had sought for two days in Point Mugu State Park.

The search for that animal was called off Wednesday and the park reopened after officials determined that the lion probably had left the area.

Trackers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture examined roads in the Big Sycamore Canyon area, where the cougar was seen several times over the weekend, but did not notice fresh marks during their two-day search.

The cat probably has moved out of the state park onto private land or the adjacent Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, Reese said.

“Individual lions have been known to travel 100 miles in one direction,” he said.

The animal frightened two hikers Sunday afternoon. After seeing the cougar at a distance, the women hid in a portable toilet as they heard footsteps coming from the brush. When one of the women looked out of the toilet’s vents, she saw the cat circling just outside.

Deeming the mountain lion a public safety hazard, trackers had aimed to kill it.

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Mountain lion sightings in forests are common, but finding the cats in residential areas is not. Santa Paula’s last experience with a cougar was in July 1996, when an 80-pound female cat was spotted in a tree near an apartment building. Department of Fish and Game officials tranquilized the animal and released it in Los Padres National Forest.

Mountain lions are protected by state law, but citizens who have persistent problems with the cats, particularly ranchers whose animals have been attacked, can receive permits to kill the lions. About 400 such permits are issued in California each year, department spokesman Patrick Moore said.