Two children were injured in a reported coyote attack in San Diego on Tuesday night.
The incident occurred on Nov. 25 near the UTC Mall in La Jolla at around 9:00 p.m. local time, according to ABC 10News, Fox 5 and NBC San Diego.
Officials with the San Diego Police Department said one of the victims is a 3-year-old girl who suffered bite wounds on her hip and arm, per ABC 10News. She was transported to Rady Children’s Hospital for treatment.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife also confirmed that a second child was hurt, though details about that child’s injuries and condition have not yet been released.
By the time emergency crews arrived, the coyote had already left the area, Fox 5 reported.
“It’s actually very uncommon for coyotes to want to approach people. They’re naturally neophobic animals, so they have this natural fear of humans,” Angela Hernandez-Cusick, Wildlife Rehabilitation Supervisor at San Diego Humane Society’s Wildlife Center in Ramona, told ABC 10News.
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She explained that younger coyotes may be in a transitional phase: “They may be starting to leave their family groups and finding their own territories, essentially kind of figuring out what it is to live as a coyote.”
Regarding the animal’s presence near the mall, Hernandez-Cusick noted, “It’s not completely unheard of that they could still venture into those areas. Certainly, where there are a lot of people, there’s going to be a lot of garbage. There’s going to be other resources that they may not be able to find more readily in the natural areas.”
On the possible motive for the attack, she added, “We can speculate that it could have been some sort of prey motivation that maybe was enacted if the child moved a certain way, or maybe the child approached an area that the coyote wasn’t expecting.”
