SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A runner at Mission Trails Regional Park had a terrifying encounter with a mountain lion on a trail in the eastern part of the park, coming within feet of the animal before scaring it off. The incident is the latest in a series of mountain lion sightings at the park since June.<\/p>\n
Two Thursdays ago, just before 6 a.m., David Blome set out on his regular run on the Grasslands Loop Trail. Minutes into his run, he looked back.<\/p>\n
“Running down this trail here, something told me to look behind me, and 15 feet behind me was a pretty good sized mountain lion walking after me,” Blome said.<\/p>\n
Blome froze for a moment before instinct took over \u2014 but not in the right direction.<\/p>\n
“That’s when I started to make mistake of running away from it down the trail. It followed after me, got faster, got within 5 to 8 feet of me. It showed me its teeth, and got down like it was getting ready to pounce,” Blome said.<\/p>\n
In that moment, Blome feared the worst.<\/p>\n
“Seriously thought about this could be it. I thought of my family. It was a scary moment,” Blome said.<\/p>\n
He then recalled what experts recommend when confronted by a mountain lion \u2014 make yourself as large and loud as possible.<\/p>\n
“I went ‘Ahhhh!’ as loud as I could. I was just yelling some stuff you can’t say on the news. i was frightened, but I got as big as I could,” Blome said.<\/p>\n
The mountain lion ran off, watching him the whole way.<\/p>\n
Blome’s encounter comes nearly 2 months after I spoke with Gabe Yanez, who came face to face with a mountain lion during an evening jog on a trail just to the west of where Blome was running.<\/p>\n
“As soon as I saw it, I was thinking mountain lion, mountain lion! Freaked the heck out of me,” Yanez said in an August interview.<\/p>\n
Yanez also managed to scare off the animal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWaving, yelling, screaming at it. At one point, it showed its teeth, and I showed my teeth,” Yanez said.<\/p>\n
Yanez was able to take photos of the mountain lion during the encounter. When Blome watched the story, he had a reaction to those images.<\/p>\n
“It looks roughly the same size,” Blome said.<\/p>\n
Park rangers say there have been 9 confirmed mountain lion sightings since June. The animals are native to the park.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, park officials posted on Instagram that a mountain lion was struck and killed by a vehicle nearby, on Highway 67. It is not known if it is the same cougar seen in and around the park.<\/p>\n
Warning signs about the sightings remain posted throughout the park. Blome said he hopes his experience serves as a reminder to other visitors.<\/p>\n
“I’m glad everyone is hearing more and more about it. It was a scary encounter you should be prepared for,” Blome said. \u201cI would have run with a buddy, or brought something like an air horn.”<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A runner at Mission Trails Regional Park had a terrifying encounter with a mountain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[75155,58111,36735,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-476402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-cougar","tag-mission-trails","tag-mountain-lion","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}