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“She’s expected to recover, she’s going to be okay,” said Patrick Foy, captain of the law enforcement division at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
The recent attack of a young girl at the San Francisco Botanical Garden has resulted in three coyotes being killed by local wildlife authorities.
A 5-year-old girl was attending day camp at a botanical garden located in Golden Gate Park when she was bitten by a coyote on Friday, June 28, forcing officials to temporarily close the area, SFGATE reported.
“There were puncture wounds associated with a coyote bite,” Patrick Foy, captain of the law enforcement division at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the outlet on July 1. “She was transported to the hospital. She’s expected to recover, she’s going to be okay.”
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Officials quickly alerted other agencies and took the necessary steps to find the coyote that bit the young girl. “We were successful in getting to the child before any significant cleaning of the bite wounds were done,” Foy told SFGATE. “They used a Q-tip and ran it over the area where the animal punctured the skin.”
Representatives from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) tell PEOPLE that the “CDFW Wildlife forensic scientists have matched the DNA from the attack victim’s bite wounds to a coyote euthanized over the weekend.”
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The United States Agriculture Department (USDA) was then called to the scene and USDA trappers identified the other two coyotes that were in the area at the time of the child’s attack, shooting and killing them, SFGATE reported.
As the young girl continues to recover from her minor injuries, the CDFW was unable to provide a rabies update on the animal that bit her, telling PEOPLE that the “rabies test is not done by our agency and takes several days, so that is not available yet.”
3 coyotes shot, killed after attacking 5-year-old child at a botanical garden
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Wildlife officers shot and killed three coyotes at the San Francisco Botanical Garden over the weekend after a coyote attacked a 5-year-old girl, authorities said Monday.
Two coyotes were shot on Saturday and one was shot on Sunday, said Patrick Foy, a spokesperson for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
A coyote bit the 5-year-old on Friday while the girl was playing during a supervised summer camp visit at the garden within Golden Gate Park. The girl was treated for the bite wound at a hospital, her mother, Helen Sparrow, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“If a coyote or bear or mountain lion attacks a person, those animals are euthanized, and we conduct a rabies test on them post-mortem and take DNA samples,” Foy said Monday morning.
Officers were able to retrieve a DNA sample from the girl’s wound. Scientists on Monday were attempting to use that sample to identify which coyote attacked her. If none of the samples match, agents may need to trap or kill other coyotes in the park, Foy said.
The garden reopened Monday after being closed following the attack.
Sparrow told the Chronicle that her daughter had begun to run but tripped and the coyote “bit her on the bum when she was down.”
Doctors stitched up the bite wound and administered a rabies vaccine, though they told Sparrow that coyotes rarely test positive for rabies, the Chronicle reported.
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