FILE – A coyote attacked a child in a north Los Angeles neighborhood on Friday.
Pierre Longnus/Getty ImagesA home security video shared by KTLA shows a coyote attacking a 2-year-old girl Friday afternoon in front of her Los Angeles home before her father scared the animal away.
In the footage (see below), the animal grabs the girl’s legs with its mouth and drags her across the grass and pavement.
The girl’s parents, Shira and Ariel Eliyahuo, told the TV news station that the incident occurred after they had just arrived home and the father lifted her out of her car seat and onto the driveway.
“For a second, [Ariel] just turned inside the car and he just heard her screaming and he didn’t see the coyote, he thought she fell,” Shira told KTLA. “So he ran over and he saw the coyote.”
Ariel Eliyahuo heard the girl screaming on the other side of the SUV, then realized she was being attacked by what appeared to be a coyote. The father shouted and charged at the animal, causing it to release the girl, pause briefly a short distance away, then scamper off.
The girl suffered scratches and bruises in the attack and was treated at an emergency room, where she received the rabies vaccine.
The family lives in Woodland Hills, a neighborhood in northern LA at the edge of the Santa Monica Mountains.
“We don’t live in a zoo, we live in Los Angeles,” Ariel told CNN. “Now I’m really, really, really afraid to let the kids go out, even in the backyard, by themselves.”
Capt. Patrick Foy, a spokesperson for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told CNN that officials are searching for the animal and will euthanize it so it can be tested for rabies.
Coyotes typically avoid humans but can lose their natural fear when they have access to human food, such as food scraps left in garbage, according to Fish and Wildlife.
A coyote attacked a toddler at Huntington Beach in Southern California in April.
Fish and Wildlife didn’t immediately respond to SFGATE’s request for comment for this story.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
