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Witness recounts cougar attack of 4-year-old, rescue by dad in Olympic National Park

caption: An Olympic Peninsula cougar, photographed in the wild on March 19, 2021.
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An Olympic Peninsula cougar, photographed in the wild on March 19, 2021.
Courtesy Mark Elbroch/Panthera

Steve Murrow, 40, and his wife had been hiking and exploring in the Olympic National Park for most of the day with her relatives. They wanted to do one more hike, along Hurricane Ridge, before heading home. They had just started down the trail, when they heard a child scream.

“I kind of chalked it off as just a kid being bratty,” Murrow said.

But there was something disquieting about the scream, something that made Murrow think it wasn’t just a tired child having a tantrum.

“It sounded like the child was screaming bloody murder,” he explained, “like screaming for his or her life.”

A few minutes later, a young woman hurried past, carrying a child wrapped in a blanket. The woman was being consoled by another woman, Murrow said.

“I thought it was weird because she was like, ‘Oh, you’re doing OK. You’re doing so good,’” Murrow said. “I’m thinking, ‘What’s going on?’ Because I didn’t see blood or anything.”

What happened is that, a few hundred yards in the direction Murrow and his wife were walking, a 4-year-old child had been dragged into the woods by a cougar.

RELATED: A cougar attacked them. They fought back for 45 harrowing minutes

The boy's father ran after the cougar and managed to rescue his son, sustaining scratches from the cougar in the process. The boy was LifeFlighted to Harborview Medical Center in satisfactory condition and released Monday afternoon, according to Susan Gregg, media relations director at UW Medicine.

The cougar was tracked down and shot by park rangers Monday, according to the National Park Service.

Once he realized what had happened and that everyone was safe, Murrow wanted to see if he could get a video or photo of the cougar.

Along the trail, he said he and his relatives encountered people who looked pale or in shock going the other way.

“They were like, ‘Don’t go there,’” he said. “Like, ‘Oh, my God, be careful if you’re going that way.’”

Murrow said he was planning to stay on the trail, but he couldn’t help himself.

RELATED: Cougar that attacked women was 'pretty fat,' didn't act out of hunger, vet says

“I guess my sense of adventure got the best of me,” he said. “So, I walked into the woods a little bit and came to a clearing area where I thought, ‘Hey, this will probably be the spot.’”

It was in fact the spot. Murrow found a child’s shoe and pants, which apparently had been torn off during the attack.

Murrow and his relatives walked back to the trailhead. Along the way, they took a video of a doe and fawn crossing the trail and posted a warning with the video on X.

They saw park rangers arriving and hurrying to close the trail on which they had been walking moments before.

Murrow said his father-in-law asked one of the park rangers whether that happens often.

“She gave the standard, ‘Does what happen?’” Murrow said. “He said, ‘Well, does a cougar attack a child and drag him in the woods often?’ And she said, ‘Oh, no.’”

Park rangers located the cougar a short time later with the help of a canine team, but they were not able to shoot the cougar until Monday.

RELATED: There's a cougar in my backyard (reprise)

There have only been two fatal cougar attacks in Washington state in the last century, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Back home in New Jersey, Murrow operates a tree service and is known for rescuing cats for free. He estimates that in the past few years, he has rescued 175 cats, but he has still never seen a cougar in the wild.

“That’s why I was kind of floating around in the woods to see, because I had not seen one in person ever,” he said. “We had seen a lot of wildlife on this trip, which was really awesome. Terrible though that the kid was attacked by one, but thankfully, he’s OK.”

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