SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ A man found on the side of a rural Nevada County road Sunday night with his throat slashed was attacked by a person _ not a mountain lion, despite initial fears a cougar was to blame, investigators said Monday.
On Sunday evening, a couple spotted a man with his throat slashed on the 17000 block of You Bet Road, a neighborhood of winding, narrow streets and rural homes surrounded by oaks and thick brush in rural Nevada County north of Rollins Reservoir in the foothills above Colfax.
Because he had what a witness described as animal hair on his hands and other possible signs of a mountain lion attack, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife was called in to help investigate.
On Monday, the Nevada County Sheriff's Office announced detectives were serving a search warrant on the 50-year-old man's home, where they believed the assault occurred. Reports a mountain lion was to blame were "unsubstantiated," the sheriff's office said on Facebook.
The victim wasn't identified, and no suspects are in custody, detectives said. A sheriff's spokesman couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Capt. Patrick Foy of the Department of Fish and Wildlife said his agency became involved after spotting a post on social media Sunday from a woman named Danielle Atwood, who said she thought it may have been a mountain lion attack.
Atwood wrote that she was driving down You Bet Road with her boyfriend, Jason Day, Sunday evening when they spotted a bloody hand reaching out of the bushes.
The couple reversed, and shined their headlights on the man in the brush.
"We saw he had a slit throat," Atwood wrote.
Day dialed 911 and Atwood flagged down a passing vehicle driven by another couple. The man in the other vehicle took out a sweater, which he and Day pressed onto the man's neck to try to stop the bleeding. "His trachea was hanging out," Atwood wrote.
At one point before rescue workers showed up, they thought the man died, but he started moving, Atwood wrote.
"He also kept shakily pointing into the woods like he was terrified that whatever hurt him was going to come back for him," Atwood wrote.
Rescue workers said he had what appeared to be animal fur on his hands, and that it could have been a mountain lion attack, Atwood wrote.
Atwood and Day couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
