‘Two brothers driven by nature’: family pays tribute to victims of cougar attack

Taylen Brooks, 21, was mauled to death and his brother Wyatt suffered serious injuries in big cat attack in California woods

Relatives of a 21-year-old man who was mauled to death by a mountain lion that also wounded his younger brother over the weekend in California are grateful that they didn’t lose both siblings – but they are also heartbroken that the rare attack tore apart a pair who shared a remarkably tight bond, according to a family statement.

Before respectively dying and being badly injured in what was California’s first fatal cougar-on-person attack in two decades, Taylen Robert Claude Brooks and 18-year-old Wyatt Jay Charles Brooks were “close as any two brothers could be” and fought their animal assailant fiercely as they desperately attempted to save each other, their family and authorities said in an emotional statement released jointly.