A mountain lion injured an 11-year-old girl in Malibu over the weekend, California officials said.
The cat approached the girl from behind on Sunday evening while she was near a chicken coop on her family’s property, according to the California Department of Fish Wildlife.
The cougar then bit the child on the arm, leg, and lower back, officials said. She was treated at an area hospital for minor injuries, The Associated Press reports.
The Lost Hills Station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told KTLA it responded to a call about the attack shortly after 5.30 p.m on Sunday.
Family members, including the girl’s mother and sibling, heard the child screaming and ran over.
“That’s when the mountain lion proceeded to chase the mother and the sibling,” an agency spokesperson told The Los Angeles Times.
Another family member approached the creature with a stun gun, and the sound of the weapon reportedly scared the cat away.
Officials later found a mountain lion in the area and euthanized it.
DNA samples have been taken to confirm if the cougar was the same one that attacked the child.
Dangerous encounters with mountain lions are extremely rare, according to state data.
There have been 27 confirmed attacks on humans since 1986, most of them nonfatal, according to an AP analysis.
In March of 2024, a mountain lion attacked two brothers near Georgetown in Northern California, killing one of them.
The encounter was the first fatal cougar attack in two decades in the state.
That same year, at Malibu Creek State park, a five-year-old boy was pulled from the jaws of a mountain lion, after the cat tried to drag the boy away from a family picnic.
“Somebody screamed the baby’s name, and his dad started running,” one of the boy’s aunts told local news at the time. “The father grabbed the mountain lion with his hands, and he just fought, Then the mountain lion let go.”
