SAN FRANCISCO — Over the weekend, animal rights activists shot and killed three coyotes at the San Francisco Botanical Garden after one attacked a 5-year-old girl, authorities said Monday.
According to Patrick Foy, spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, two coyotes were shot and killed on Saturday and one on Sunday.
A coyote bit the 5-year-old girl on Friday while she was playing at a supervised summer camp in the Golden Gate Park Garden. The girl was treated for the bite wound at a hospital, her mother, Helen Sparrow, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“If a coyote, bear or mountain lion attacks a person, those animals are euthanized and we do a post-mortem test for rabies and take DNA samples,” Foy said Monday morning.
Officers were able to recover a DNA sample from the girl’s wound. Scientists were attempting to use that sample Monday to identify which coyote attacked her. If none of the samples match, officers may need to capture or kill other coyotes in the park, Foy said.
The garden reopened on Monday after being closed following the attack.
Sparrow told the Chronicle that her daughter started to run but tripped and the coyote “bit her in the butt as she was laying down.”
Doctors stitched up the bite wound and gave him a rabies vaccine, but they told Sparrow that coyotes rarely test positive for rabies, the Chronicle reported.