Dad, Ian O’Reilly, of Kensington NH, was out walking with his wife and three kids when a (presumably) rabid coyote caught the hood of his son’s jacket and dragged him to the ground. Mom was able to tear the kids away and dad went after the beast.
“There was no running away, it would not allow us to run away,” O’Reilly said. “It was very much the aggressor. 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.”
As his wife called 911, O’Reilly strangled the coyote with his bare hands.
“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 moving vehicle on a road, biting a 62-year-old woman and her dogs on a porch in Kensington, and attacking the O’Reilly family. The police aren’t ruling out the possibility that this was the work of two coyotes.
Amazingly, O’Reilly reported that the same son pulled down by the coyote was bitten by a rabid raccoon in the family’s backyard last year!