Just weeks before a tragic incident involving a hiker and a suspected mountain lion attack in Colorado, another man narrowly escaped a similar fate on the same trail.

Gary Messina recounted how he was ambushed by a mountain lion during an early morning run along the northern Colorado trail one November morning.

In a bid to fend off the predator, Messina hurled his phone at the creature as it persistently circled him. Eventually, he managed to break off a stick from a nearby log and struck the mountain lion on the head, allowing him to escape after a tense few minutes.

“I had no choice but to defend myself because it was intent on attacking me,” Messina explained to The Associated Press. “I was genuinely fearing for my life, and despite my attempts to back away, it kept lunging at me.”

An image of a mountain lion taken at the Wildlife Rescue Center in Alajuela, Costa Rica, on September 16, 2024. (Ezequiel Becerra/AFP via Getty Images)

A woman who was found dead on the same trail on New Year’s Day had “wounds consistent with a mountain lion attack,” a Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman said.

“Around 12:15 this afternoon, hikers on the Crosier Mountain trail in Larimer County observed a mountain lion near a person lying on the ground from about 100 yards away,” Kara Van Hoose said in a Thursday news conference.

After the suspected attack, wildlife officials killed two mountain lions and are searching for a third to determine if the animal had rabies or another disease.

The attack was the first fatal suspected mountain lion mauling in more than 25 years, with the last one occurring in 1999.

This photo provided by Gary Messina shows a mountain lion in the brush between two trees along the Crosier Mountain trail in the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests near Glen Haven, Colo., on Nov 11, 2025.  (Gary Messina via AP)

Messina said he reported his incident days after and officials posted warning signs about mountain lions that were later taken down.

He said he believes the animal that attacked him may have been the same one that killed the New Year’s hiker.

Mountain lion sightings in that area of the Rocky Mountains National Park are common, but the animals are rarely aggressive.

The New Year’s Day attack would be the fourth fatal one in North America in the last decade and the 30th since 1868, according to the Mountain Lion Foundation.

“As more people live, work, and recreate in areas that overlap wildlife habitat, interactions can increase, not because mountain lions are becoming more aggressive, but because overlap is growing,” the organization’s chief conservation officer, Byron Weckworth, said.

Authorities suspect a lone woman hiker in Colorado was killed in a rare mountain lion attack on New Year’s Day.  (AP Digital Embed)

To avoid risk of an attack, experts tell nature seekers to avoid dawn and dusk when mountain lions are most active and to travel in groups.

During an encounter, experts say to maintain eye contact with the animal, try to appear as large as possible, slowly back away without turning your back on the animal and to not run.