As 31-year-old Travis Kauffman thrashed at the bottom of a gully, wrestling with a mountain lion that wouldn’t let go of his wrist, the Colorado man realized it might be his last day alive.
“Well, this would be a pretty crappy way to die,” Kauffman remembers thinking. He told Luke Runyon of member station KUNC about it in his first sit-down media interview. “It very much turned into a full-on fight for survival.”
Kauffman’s incredible story made the rounds earlier this month, when media around the world reported of an anonymous runner who had killed a juvenile mountain lion in self-defense. Few details were announced at the time, and reporters had to rely on a statement from Colorado Parks and Wildlife. On Thursday, Kauffman’s identity was announced to the world in a news conference.
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