Cougar Kills One Man, Injures Another in Attack Near Seattle

A cougar killed one man and seriously injured another in a rare attack Saturday in rural Washington state, authorities said.

The two men, in their 30s, were mountain biking near North Bend, a foothills town about 30 miles from Seattle, about 11 a.m. when they realized a cougar was chasing them. Capt. Alan Myers, of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Police, told KIRO that the men made loud noises — something that authorities recommend people do during such encounters to drive the animals away. But as the bikers were catching their breath, the cougar lunged at one of them and latched on to his head.

“He said he had his whole entire head in the jaws of this animal and was being shaken around very, very horribly,” Myers said.

That man managed to escape, only to find his friend being chased by the cougar. The other man dropped his bike, ran into the woods and was later killed, Myers told KIRO. Myers said the attack and the animal’s behavior are rare.

“The fact that it stayed in close proximity to these folks and attacked and stayed with them is highly, highly unusual,” he said.

Police: Man Rams Vehicle Into Restaurant, Kills Daughter

Bessemer City, n.c. — A man intentionally rammed a vehicle into a North Carolina restaurant busy serving Sunday lunch, killing his daughter and another person and injuring several others, authorities said.

Bessemer City Police said in a statement that preliminary evidence indicates the man purposely smashed his way into the Surf and Turf Lodge about noon Sunday.

Footage from the scene showed emergency responders treating people on the ground outside the restaurant as shocked patrons milled about afterward. Killed was 26-year-old Katelyn Tyler Self, the daughter of the driver and a Gaston County Sheriff’s Office deputy. Authorities haven’t released the name of the second person fatally injured while they were still notifying relatives.

Police said the driver, Roger Self, was arrested after the vehicle had fully slammed its way inside the steak and seafood restaurant in Bessemer City, about 30 miles west of Charlotte. Authorities did not immediately make clear what charges Self faces.

Arrest Records of Rosa Parks, MLK to Be Preserved

Montgomery, Ala. — Yellowing court records from the arrests of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and others at the dawn of the modern civil rights era are being preserved and digitized after being discovered, folded and wrapped in rubber bands, in a courthouse box.

Archivists at historically black Alabama State University are cataloguing and flattening dozens of documents found at the Montgomery County Courthouse, and Circuit Clerk Tiffany McCord hopes electronic versions will be available for viewing as early as late June.

Once the records are added to Alabama’s online court system, historians and others will be able to read the original pleadings filed by Parks’ attorneys following her refusal to give her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus on Dec. 1, 1955.

Parks’ arrest led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which launched a young King to prominence as a civil rights leader while the Atlanta-born pastor was working at his first church in downtown Montgomery.

The records being preserved include a bail document signed in black ink by King, who was arrested in March 1956 with Parks and more than 100 others on charges of boycotting the city bus system in protest of Parks’ treatment.

— Wire reports