Mountain Lion Killed After Fatal Attack on Orange County Cyclist Didn’t Have Rabies

The mountain lion believed to have attacked two Orange County mountain bikers last week did not have rabies, authorities said Monday, ruling out one reason for its aggressiveness.

State wildlife investigators have been performing tests to determine, among other things, why the animal exhibited such aggressive behavior when it killed Mark Reynolds and then injured Anne Hjelle hours later along the same trail in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park.

Steve Edinger, an assistant chief in charge of five counties for the California Department of Fish and Game, said Monday that tests conducted over the weekend at an agency laboratory in San Bernardino turned up negative for rabies.

The stomach contents of the 2-year-old, 110-pound male, which included skin tissue and parts of a lung and liver consistent with that of a human, were being sent to the Orange County coroner’s office for comparison with Reynolds’ DNA.

Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, said the DNA tests would take five to seven days.

Reynolds, 35, was riding alone last Thursday about noon and had apparently crouched down to fix a broken bicycle chain along the Cactus Ridge trail when he was attacked. He was the sixth fatality from a mountain lion mauling in California and the first since 1994.

Hjelle, 30, was rescued from a mountain lion’s jaws hours later in the same area by her riding companion, Debi Nicholls, and other trail riders. She remains hospitalized in Mission Viejo.