A coyote believed to be responsible for a series of attacks in New Hampshire has been killed.
One attack took place in the area of Wild Pasture and Hemlock roads in Kensington, according to police. For 15 minutes, Pat Lee heard her dogs barking, and when she went onto her enclosed porch, she saw a coyote outside acting aggressively.
"I ran after him and I realized, 'Oh my gosh, this isn't a neighbor dog. This is a coyote,'" Lee recalled. "And I started just screaming at the top of my lungs, like, 'it's a coyote. Oh my God!'"
The dogs somehow got the door open, Lee said, and the coyote managed to get inside the porch. That's when the coyote attacked her and one of her dogs.
Contractors working on a house nearby were able to help the woman fight the coyote off.
"Thank God the plumber was here because the plumber was standing at the door screaming, 'Get in! Get in!' And I was running behind the dogs to get them in, and just as I was here, literally, the coyote bit me. In the butt," Lee said.
The animal then ran off into the woods.
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The same coyote had run at a car aggressively earlier the same morning in nearby Hampton Falls before running off into the woods, police said.
"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 said.
The coyote is also believed to have attacked a third time.
Ian O'Reilly was able to strangle it to death with its own hands when it attacked him and one of his children during a family walk in Exeter.
O'Reilly says he was with his wife and three young kids when the coyote attacked his youngest child.
"Coyote came behind us and grabbed our youngest child and grabbed him to the ground," he said. "My wife was able to disengage the two."
But the coyote wouldn't back down.
"It was very aggressive. I did try to kick it and shoo it away multiple times," O'Reilly recalled.
Thankfully O'Reilly's two-year-old son wasn't bitten.
O'Reilly eventually wrestled the coyote to the ground and strangled it to death.
"I was able to kick it in the jaw," he said. "It went down. I just gripped its snout, kept it in the snow and then was eventually able to put my hand over its nose and in the process just gripped its windpipe and sat there for a long time. Five minutes later I thought it was over with but it wasn't. Then I straddled it and scissor locked it, then continued to just hold it down."
"I'm just really grateful because I was really worried about other people," Lee said.
Police said O'Reilly not only saved his own family but a lot of other people
"The chances are it was sick and the pack kicked it out of the pack," Cain said.
The two adult victims have already received rabies shots. In the meantime, New Hampshire Fish and Game have collected the coyote and will test it for rabies.
