Officials: Cougar in fatal Wash. attack was underweight

(Update: Victims identified; report on cougar’s weight)

NORTH BEND, Wash. (AP) – Authorities say the cougar that attacked two cyclists about 30 miles east of Seattle on Saturday, killing one of them, appears to have been emaciated.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Police Capt. Alan Myers said Sunday that the cougar was about 100 pounds, when a typical 3-year-old male in the area would be 140 to 180 pounds. A necropsy will try to determine why the animal was underweight.

Myers also identified the victims of the attack. Thirty-one-year-old Isaac Sederbaum of Seattle remained in satisfactory condition at a hospital Sunday after being bitten on the head. Killed was 32-year-old S.J. Brooks, also of Seattle.

The two were riding mountain bikes on a trail in the Cascade Mountain foothills near North Bend on Saturday when the mountain lion began following them.

Authorities said they did everything right, getting off their bikes, making noise and trying to scare the animal off. One even smacked it with his bike after it charged.

The cougar ran off, but it returned and attacked when the men got back on their bikes. State wildlife agents used dogs to track the cougar and found it in a tree. They shot and killed it.

The cougar was later found up a tree near the dead man’s body, where agents for the state’s Fish and Wildlife police shot and killed it hours after the Saturday attack, the Seattle Times reported.

Rich Beausoleil, the state’s bear and cougar specialist, says it was only the second fatality in Washington state in the last 94 years.