Coyote shot dead in Dallas after 2-year-old mauled

According to officials and local sources, a coyote that matched the description of the animal that seriously injured a 2-year-old toddler in Dallas, Texas, on Tuesday was shot and killed.

On Thursday, Dallas Animal Services (DAS) informed Fox News Digital that it couldn’t confirm if the coyote shot by USDA authorities late Wednesday was the same one that attacked the kid.

According to authorities, the incident occurred just before 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday in the 9200 block of Royalpine Drive in Dallas. When the coyote attacked, the youngster was sitting on the front porch of the house.

The child’s father told FOX4 Dallas-Fort Worth that the coyote attacked his kid because he was left alone on the family’s front porch for a brief minute. According to him, the child’s mother yelled and pursued the coyote until it dropped the toddler.

According to the station, the toddler’s neck and head were lacerated. He had surgery on Tuesday and is expected to make a full recovery.

“When a coyote attacks, it’s generally an unhealthy coyote, a sick coyote,” Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Sam Kieschnick previously told the station. “That’s a coyote that has to be taken out of the population.” The incident occurred less than a week after a coyote attacked a 2-year-old kid in Huntington Beach, California. That coyote was eventually shot and killed.

The Dallas coyote was well-known in the area, and homeowners had habitually hand-fed and petted the animal, behaviors that, according to the DAS, “eroded the coyote’s innate dread of humans and given it the confidence to carry out this attack.”

“This tragic incident demonstrates why residents must treat all wildlife as wild animals,” the agency said in a Facebook post. “When wild animals become too comfortable around humans, there is an increase in problematic and dangerous interactions like this one, putting both residents and the animal itself at risk.”