Rare cougar attack near North Bend leaves one dead and one in hospital

NORTH BEND, Wash. — Two mountain bikers near North Bend did everything they were supposed to when confronted by a cougar, but one man is dead and another is currently in satisfactory condition at Harborview Medical Center.

Captain Alan Myers with the Department of Fish and Wildlife tells KOMO the cougar attacked Isaac Sederbaum, but when 32-year-old S.J. Brooks ran, the cougar attacked Brooks, killing him.

“It’s very rare for cougars to behave in this way. The statistics on this are quite stunning: There’s only been one fatal attack in the last hundred years and this would make number two,” he says.

Myers says they killed the cougar, which appeared emaciated, and sent it for a necropsy to determine if something else was wrong with it to make it behave that way.