Posted on 01/17/2004 5:29:42 PM PST by KneelBeforeZod
REDLANDS - A police officer shot and killed a neighborhood cat he thought was a mountain lion Thursday after two cougar sightings were reported in the same area over the last eight days.
Animal control officers were sent to a home in the 1500 block of Crestview Road about 11:30 a.m. They were met by a police officer who emerged from a home carrying an AR-15 assault rifle.
The officer told Redlands Animal Control Supervisor Gayle Lipes he had shot the cat, which he described to her as very large and resembling a wild animal.
"Why the hell did you shoot it before we got here?" Lipes asked.
Clearly upset, Lipes and another animal control officer got back in their truck and drove to the clearing between Crestview and Marion roads where the carcass of the black-striped cat lay. She scooped it into her arms and placed it in the truck.
Alice Worme, 81, and her daughter-in-law, Alvina Worme, who are visiting relatives living at the home, first spotted the cat. Thinking it was the mountain lion they saw Thursday and Sunday, they called police.
"We watched it walking along the fence. It rested a while and started walking again. It's just getting closer and closer every day," said Alice Worme, who stood on the back patio Thursday looking into the clearing below where the cat was shot.
Alvina Worme said she's been getting a workout lately trying to keep a dachshund named Heide and a Siamese cat named Bradley, who she's been caring for, away from danger.
"Because we've had these little animals around, I've been vigilant," she said. "I've run off about 30 pounds this week."
Redlands police Capt. Tom Fitzmaurice said the officer who shot the cat was standing about 60 yards away when he spotted it near a high growth area.
He said police followed proper protocol and were given discretion for such actions by state Department of Fish and Game officials after the two reported mountain lion sightings on Jan. 8 and on Sunday.
"We're very concerned for people's well-being up there. There are a lot of children and people who walk around," said Fitzmaurice. "The officers truly thought it was the cougar. They really feel bad."
Between November 2001 and January, there have been 31 cougar sightings in southeast Redlands. Also on Thursday, a woman called animal control reporting she saw a mountain lion Sunday near Alessandro Road and Sunset Hills Lane, Lipes said.
Animal-control and Fish and Game officials announced this week all the sightings in the last couple of years could involve the same mountain lion because of the general area of where the sightings have occurred and the about 100-square-mile space that a single cougar claims as its territory.
"The bottom line is, if we have a mountain lion in someone's back yard, we find it acceptable for the mountain lion to be taken out," said Mike McBride, a chief of the California Department of Fish and Game. "We're not going to assume that every time this lion is in a back yard, everything is going to be fine."
But McBride wanted to stress that officials are not hunting the mountain lion.
"We are not actively looking for this lion. If there's a situation like the one we had (on Sunday), the (Police Department) has a green light, and it would be prudent for them to take action, and we will totally support that decision."
Mike McCurdy, the Camelot Drive resident who videotaped the mountain lion outside his home on Sunday, said he knew the cat shot Thursday was not the same one he videotaped.
"It comes up on my porch. It's a good-sized cat. It's a neighborhood cat," McCurdy said of the domestic feline in a telephone interview Thursday.
"I think it's the father of some of my household cats. I feel really bad. I'm thinking all this alarm ends up with a domestic cat shot."
I shot a housecat at 100 yards by accident
On the last day of the hunt, the guide went out to pick up the hunters, and one of them told the guide excitedly, "I got one! I couldn't tell how big he was, but I'm pretty sure it was a good shot!"
The guide told him that he'd go out and look for the bear later and they went back to the lodge.
The next day, when telling the story, the guide was heard to say, "Well, I went out and found it...and it was the biggest damned racoon I've ever seen"
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