A two-year-old girl was attacked by a coyote in front of her house in a Los Angeles neighborhood. Little Ariya had just gotten out of the car, returning from kindergarten. Her father was helping her other son get off her when he heard the screams of her baby: a coyote had attacked her, before biting her in the leg and causing her to fall to the ground. Then trying to drag her away.
It all happened in a few but dramatic moments captured by a Ring.com camera. Luckily for the little girl, the father was very quick to intervene: “Go, go” the man shouted as he hurried to pick up the little girl who, scared and hurt, was crying desperately.
What is striking is the behavior of the coyote which does not seem at all frightened by the presence of the screaming adult human: it only moves away when the man throws an object at it.
Anya’s parents, selling her bloody pants, immediately took her to the hospital for examination. The little girl underwent several treatments and anti-rabies injections.
The family lives in Woodland Hills, which is a very urbanized neighborhood, therefore not used to the presence of a coyote: “We don’t live in a zoo, we live in Los Angeles – explains the man -. Now I’m really, really, really afraid of let the kids go out, even in the back yard, by themselves.”
Wildlife officials with dart guns set out on the coyote’s trail with the goal of capturing and euthanizing it to see if it tested positive for rabies. Authorities also took samples of the girl’s clothing and hope to collect DNA that can be used to identify the animal once it is captured.
