(CBS News) — A coyote attacked a pair of dogs, bit a woman and skirmished with a vehicle before being killed by a father defending his family on a walk on Monday, police said. CBS station WBZ-TV reports that Ian O’Reilly said he had no choice but to fight.
“There was no running away, it would not allow us to run away,” O’Reilly said. “It was very much the aggressor.”
O’Reilly, his wife, and three young children were hiking at Jude’s Pond when the coyote went after his young son. “It actually caught the hood of his jacket and was able to pull him down,” O’Reilly said.
O’Reilly wife grabbed the kids before the animal could bite anyone and dad found himself eye to eye with the snarling beast.
“I did kick him square in the jaw once that put him to the ground and I was able to jump on him after that,” O’Reilly said.
As his wife called 911, O’Reilly strangled the coyote during several minutes that seemed surreal at best.
“In the moment you don’t really pay attention to what’s going on, you just try and go with whatever goes through your brain, instincts I suppose,” O’Reilly said.
The Kensington Police Department believes the same coyote was responsible for attacking a vehicle on a roadway in Hampton Falls, biting a 62-year-old woman and her dogs on a porch in Kensington, and attacking a family on a walking trail in Exeter.
All three attacks were relatively close together and happened in little more than an hour, Kensington Police Chief Scott Cain said Monday.
Law enforcement officials were searching for the coyote when they got word that it had been killed. “The coyote came out of the woods and grabbed a child by the jacket. The dad when into protection mode and strangled the coyote,” Cain said.
New Hampshire Fish and Game collected the coyote and will test it for rabies. The victims were being treated for rabies as a precaution.