Free Republic

(08-31) 18:35 PDT BERKELEY -- Berkeley police shot and killed a mountain lion early Tuesday as it roamed a neighborhood around the city's world-famous Gourmet Ghetto for at least an hour, leaping over fences from one backyard to another. Three officers shot and killed the 100-pound adult female with rifles and a shotgun shortly before 3:30 a.m. outside a home on the 1600 block of Walnut Street, just blocks from Chez Panisse restaurant, the flagship Peet's Coffee store, the Cheese Board Collective and other businesses along busy Shattuck Avenue in North Berkeley. Residents speculated that the mountain lion had been...