In a chilling precursor to a fatal incident, a man narrowly escaped a mountain lion encounter on the same Colorado trail where a hiker was later killed.

Gary Messina recounted his harrowing experience of being charged by a mountain lion during an early morning run on the northern Colorado trail in November.

Messina described how he fended off the animal by hurling his phone at it and, as it circled persistently, managed to fend it off by breaking a stick from a log and striking the mountain lion on the head.

“I had to fight it off as it was practically ready to attack me,” Messina shared with The Associated Press. “I feared for my life and couldn’t find a way to escape. Each time I tried to back away, it lunged at me.”

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

Tragically, a woman found dead on the same trail on New Year’s Day had injuries that a Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman confirmed were “consistent with a mountain lion attack.”

“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.