Coyote bites woman in parking lot of restaurant in Swampscott, Massachusetts

By Nathalie Pozo

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    SWAMPSCOTT, Massachusetts (WCVB) — A Texas woman who is visiting family in Massachusetts is undergoing rabies treatment after she was bitten by a coyote in the parking lot of a restaurant in Swampscott.

Kathy Ellis said she was leaving the Bertucci’s at the Swampscott Mall on Paradise Road with her sister, Susan, Saturday night when the incident happened.

Ellis said she had just put her leftovers in the car and sat down in the driver’s seat when she felt a strong bump on her thigh.

“I was thinking it was a puppy or a dog, and here’s this coyote standing there looking at me,” she said.

“She just let out this blood-curdling scream, and I had no idea why because I hadn’t seen the coyote at all,” Susan Ellis said.

“He frightened me, certainly,” Kathy Ellis said. “I was holding a can of seltzer water and I threw it at him to get him away from the door so I could it. I never expected that one would walk up to the car and just put his head right in.”

Once she was able to close the door, Kathy Ellis thought nothing of the encounter and drove to her childhood home in Salem.

“As I was driving home, I kept saying to my sister: ‘This really hurts.’ But it hadn’t torn my pants or anything, so I just thought he bumped me really hard,” she said.

Ellis checked to see if there was bruising on her leg once she got to Salem and discovered blood on the inside of her pants.

This marks the second instance within the past few weeks in which a coyote bit a person in Swampscott. The first attack happened June 13 in the parking lot of Santander Bank on Paradise Road, which is less than a block away from the parking lot where Ellis was bitten.

Ellis said police told her that people are leaving food out for coyotes, which is creating this problem in the town.

“This was a well-fed coyote,” Ellis said. “To be able to wound someone like that, especially coming right into the car, if it’s a child or a toddler or another animal, that’s really serious.”

Swampscott Animal Control officers are reminding people not to feed wild animals, as it attracts them to humans and causes incidents like this.

Shortly before 10 p.m., NewsCenter 5 captured footage of the coyote in the Swampscott Mall parking lot Tuesday — which is around the same time Ellis was bitten three nights earlier. That coyote appeared to be eating something in the parking lot.

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