ESCONDIDO, Calif. (KGTV) — After an hours-long standoff, authorities safely captured a mountain lion that wandered into a neighborhood in Escondido Monday afternoon.
According to the Escondido Police Department, a caller reported seeing a mountain lion on eastbound Mission Avenue around 1:34 p.m.
Officers were able to follow the animal to the 700 block of North Grape Street when the lion hid beneath a vehicle.
That was at 1:53 p.m. and that's where it remained for the next 4+ hours as police and biologists from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife worked together on a plan to get the animal into custody.
Several schools in the area were placed on alert for a period of time before they were released one by one.
With this all happening in a residential neighborhood, people who live there started to watch in anticipation for what might happen next.
“This is exciting to you?” ABC 10News asked Sydney Carranza.
“Yeah yeah," she said. "Nothing happens here. So, not exciting, but, it’s something new.”
Just after 6 p.m., there was sudden movement.
A CDFW spokesperson said it's "textbook for sedation for a mountain lion" that they take off after you shoot them with a tranquilizer dart.
That's exactly what happened. The animal managing to escape, but only made it a few hundred feet, back closer to E Mission Avenue, before it laid down in between two apartment buildings as the sedation started to set in.
"I looked right out of our window and it was right there and I was like, 'Oh my God,'" said Regina Pimentel, who was watching from the balcony of her brand new apartment.
"We just moved like a few days ago, so that was interesting," she said.
Several minutes went by, with a new, even larger crowd starting to form in the middle of the then-blocked off E Mission Avenue.
Everyone watched and waited.
Eventually, CDFW biologists moved back in, appearing to jab the mountain lion one more time. After ten more minutes, they made their final move to pick up the mountain lion and take it away — treated like a celebrity swarmed by a sea of paparazzi on its way out.
The CDFW spokesperson said the animal will get its vitals checked, likely be tagged and then driven deep into the forest to be released back into the wild.
As for the neighborhood, it's back to normal after a wild day.
“That was just crazy," Pimentel said.
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