After a coyote in Atwater Village bit a 16-month-old child last month, wildlife officials tracked it down, shot it, and announced that the animal was dead.
Except it wasn’t.
The animal survived being shot near the 3300 block of Glenhurst Avenue on Oct. 16 and soon reappeared in the area. Neighbors, who had previously reported being plagued by the nuisance animal for months, were shocked to see the same coyote appearing in their yards and approaching them in the street.
The only apparent difference about it, they said, was that the animal was now obviously injured, with a pronounced limp.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed in a statement on Tuesday hat the animal had survived the initial shooting. Officers at the time couldn’t find the animal’s body and even a K9 couldn’t track it down. But officials believed the animal was dead, according to the agency.
Wildlife officials told the public that they had collected DNA samples and confirmed that the animal they had shot was the same one that had bitten the child.
“Based on the available evidence at the time, officers believed the animal had succumbed to its injuries,” the agency said in its statement.
Early Tuesday morning, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and U.S. Department of Agriculture officers responded to the neighborhood again following reports that the coyote could still be alive.
Officers found the animal and it was “humanely euthanized due to the continued public safety threat it posed,” the agency said.
The coyote was an issue in the neighborhood long before it bit the toddler, with problems tracing back to around January, when several neighbors said a local man started feeding it. The animal started encroaching on people’s houses day and night. Multiple people described the animal as a hazard, including one person who said he had to yell at the coyote as it approached him and another person who saw it chase his cat into a tree.
Wildlife officials said last month that a person who allegedly fed the coyote could face a criminal charge.
Rich Dean, who lives about a block from where the animal was shot last month, said he has been in touch repeatedly with a California Department of Fish and Wildlife lieutenant about the coyote. The lieutenant told him he was one of the officers who shot the coyote, Dean said, but also said they hadn’t found the body.
Earlier this month, Dean sent the officer videos of the coyote via text message.
On Monday, Dean messaged the lieutenant that the coyote was in a crawlspace of a construction site, according to a copy of the text message exchange reviewed by the Times. The lieutenant asked for a pin, and Dean obliged.
Dean was incredulous and upset about what transpired soon after learning that the coyote had been killed Tuesday morning.
Neighbors had complained about the animal for months to different agencies, yet none addressed the problem, he said. After the state shot the animal, they “could have been straight with us” that they weren’t sure the animal was dead. After residents realized it had survived, neighbors started discussing taking the animal to a sanctuary.
“I feel like every part of government has just completely failed the community and completely failed the animal,” Dean said. “There’s just nothing good about this.”
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