Cougar That Killed Cyclist Was Underweight, Likely Desperate
A rare fatal encounter in Washington State, which left another mountain biker injured, may point to wider questions about our evolving coexistence with big predators.
An otherwise normal, mid-morning mountain bike ride turned deadly when a cougar attacked two cyclists near Seattle on Saturday.
One of them, 31-year-old Isaac Sederbaum, survived—but only after wrestling his head free from the cat’s mouth. The other cyclist, 32-year-old S.J. Brooks, wasn’t so lucky; after turning away from Sederbaum, the cat pounced on, killed, and dragged Brooks into the woods.
Sederbaum, seriously injured and seeing that there was nothing he could do for his friend, rode two miles to an area with cell service and called for help. When authorities arrived, they found the cat atop Brooks’s body, which had been partially covered with debris. After cornering the cougar up a nearby tree, agents from the state’s Department of Fish
