A Chapel Hill woman says she saw a mountain lion out her back window last week.

Linda Janssen said she was having coffee with her nephew, a 22-year-old Army private visiting for Thanksgiving, when they looked out her kitchen window Friday morning. Janssen's property on Pinehurst Drive backs up to Bolin Creek.

"It was big," she said. "We were just so stunned."

Janssen said they saw the animal, as big as her black Lab, in profile and face-on and saw it leap over a tree trunk. They watched the big cat for about a minute and a half.

"It wasn't a bobcat; it didn't have that shape,' Janssen said. "It was sleek, like [a Lincoln Mercury] car commercial."

"It was an absolutely beautiful animal."

Bob Marotto, director of Orange County Animal Services, said his department had received no reports of a cougar sighting.

"I would be surprised, but I'd never rule anything out," he said.

The eastern cougar (Puma concolor couguar) once roamed the eastern United States from Maine to South Carolina and west from Michigan to Tennessee.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has for years presumed the eastern couger was extinct, according to its website. Now, the service is beginning a review of new scientific and commercial information to determine the status of the subspecies.

-- By staff writer Mark Schultz

Newspaper deliverer crashes into building

The driver of a U-Haul truck delivering The News & Observer in Chapel Hill on Sunday morning was cited on charges of careless and reckless driving after the vehicle struck a rental house on North Roberson Street.

Chapel Hill police Officer Jared Greenlee said Richard Hallett Ray, 33, of Chapel Hill, was driving too fast when he lost control of the truck just before 8 a.m. on a rainy Sunday. The truck damaged three properties, plowing through a fence at one home and taking out Christmas decorations at another, before crashing into the front porch of a single-story house at 225 N. Roberson St.

Greenlee said the porch and foundation of the home took the brunt of the damage. The two residents inside the house were not hurt.

The accident left Ray with bumps and scrapes, but a passenger, Larry Johnson Edwards, 59, of Chapel Hill, broke a leg, Greenlee said. Both were taken to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill.

Greenlee said Ray told him he had rented a U-Haul to deliver the newspapers because his usual vehicle was being repaired. Greenlee said Ray told him he may have been distracted by attempting to bag a newspaper in plastic as he drove.

-- From staff reports

Town honored for Traffic safety work

Chapel Hill has been named the 2008 North Carolina Traffic Safe Community of the Year by AAA Carolinas' Foundation for Traffic Safety.

Chapel Hill won for the population category over 30,000. Other 2008 Traffic Safe Communities of the Year are Henderson, Vance County (between 10,000 and 30,000), and Highlands, Macon County (less than 10,000).

"Chapel Hill's dedicated traffic team monitors its 12,000 commuters entering and exiting the city each day closely," said Tom Crosby, president, AAA Carolinas' Foundation for Traffic Safety. "Police conduct weekly safety checkpoints and child safety seat clinics, and DUI or saturation check points each quarter. In addition, it does big education programs at the high schools around prom time to educate students about the dangers of drinking and driving. "

Traffic safe communities are selected by looking at crash statistics, number of law enforcement officers per capita, presence of a formal traffic safety program and/or existence of a special traffic division.

UNC-Charlotte provided the statistical analysis and AAA Carolinas' Traffic Safety Foundation chose winners in each category giving extra emphasis to those communities that are proactive in enhancing traffic safety efforts.

-- From staff reports

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