L.A. confidential: Who killed the koala?
LOS ANGELES -- A Hollywood mountain lion remains at large after the recent killing of Killarney, a 14-year-old Koala, who was mauled to death.
The suspect, caught on Los Angeles Zoo security cameras, is familiar to authorities and most everyone else in the area. He's known as p22, the Hollywood mountain lion.
"What we know at this point is it's circumstantial, but he was in the zoo the night the koala disappeared. He was seen in a couple of locations [and] certainly would be capable of doing it," said John Lewis, director of the Los Angeles Zoo.
But National Park Service Ranger Kate Kuykendall is raising reasonable doubt.
She agreed there could be other suspects. "There are bobcats and coyotes,"Kuykendall said.
But there's only one mountain lion living in Griffith Park, a more than 4000-acre wildland preserve in the middle of Los Angeles, which includes the zoo.
And p22 may have had at least one prior.
"We feel pretty confident that he had taken a raccoon at one point and fed on it at the zoo," Lewis said.
The grainy zoo video has already prompted one local politician to demand p22 be captured and moved.
"I mean koala bears are adorable and have a place in all the public's heart, but of course to a mountain lion, he doesn't see it that way," said Kuykendall.