A man choked a coyote to death Monday in New Hampshire after the animal attacked his child, bit a woman walking her dog and charged a vehicle, authorities said.
The state Fish and Game Department was testing the animal’s body for rabies, according to police in Kensington, about 25 miles east of Manchester.
The series of attacks began after a witness reported seeing a coyote attack a car just before 9 a.m. Monday in the nearby town of Hampton Falls.
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“The car was trying to get the coyote to move out of the road, and the coyote started attacking the car,” Kensington Police Chief Scott Cain told NBC Boston.
At 9 a.m., Kensington police got another call about the coyote. This time, the animal was said to have opened a woman’s sliding glass door and gotten inside her enclosed porch.
There, it lunged at her and her dogs.
“I was running behind the dogs to get them in, and just as I was here, literally, the coyote bit me — in the butt,” the woman, Pat Lee, 62, told NBC Boston.
Lee was treated at a hospital and given a rabies booster shot, Kensington police said in a news release.
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Two hours later, authorities in Exeter, another nearby town, got a call that the coyote had charged a family walking on a trail.
“The coyote attacked a young child, and the child’s dad went into protection mode and suffocated the coyote until it succumbed,” police said.