A woman claims she saw a mountain lion in District Heights off Wintergreen Avenue.

Continue reading

Leslie Johnson has grown accustomed to seeing wildlife in her yard since she moved to a two-acre wooded property in the heart of District Heights.

Usually, that’s deer and raccoons, but not on Monday.

“This huge cat came walking across on the creek bank. It had a tail extending out almost as long as its body had a white tip on it,” Johnson said.

She kept watching, too mesmerized to take a photo. She says if she had snapped a picture it would look like this: a mountain lion. She’s convinced it was not anything else.

“My great Dane (a cat) is 38 inches at the shoulder and it was taller than him. It couldn’t have been a bobcat, couldn't have been a lynx,” she says.

Her neighbor Thomas Wallace hasn’t seen a big cat but neighbors say their dogs have been acting like something is in the woods and they're taking precautions, like keeping kids inside.

Johnson says state wildlife officials brushed off her sighting when she reported it. Officials told her a cougar hasn't been here in a hundred years.

However, that's also what they said in Connecticut until a mountain lion was hit by a car last month. DNA testing showed the cat walked there from South Dakota.

Johnson figures one could have walked to her woods too.