Arizona Mother Injured Protecting Daughter from Coyote Attack

An Arizona mother was left with lacerations and puncture wounds on her face after a vicious coyote began attacking her 4-year-old daughter as they tried to fly a kite.

Brittany Cardinal and her 4-year-old daughter stepped outside in Surprise, a town 30 miles northwest of Phoenix, to fly a kite Sunday afternoon when they encountered the coyote, the mother told AZFamily.

“We had gone outside because it was windy. And my daughter’s like, ‘Oh, let’s fly a kite,'” Cardinal said.

Moments later, Cardinal said she heard her daughter start to scream as a coyote began nipping her.

“I picked her up, and then I started yelling at it, thinking, of course, it’s going to go away, and then it didn’t,” Cardinal said. “So then I took off my flip-flop, and I was trying to scare it with that by trying to hit it.”

Despite Cardinal’s best efforts, the coyote did not give up. The vicious creature lunged at the mother and clamped down on her face, leaving her with deep lacerations and puncture wounds on her face.

“I always hear people say like, ‘You don’t feel pain when trauma like that happens,’ and I mean, I really didn’t feel any pain. I just felt like the pressure of it,” she said.

Eventually, Cardinal and her daughter managed to run away from the ferocious animal and get help. The mother said she didn’t think before jumping into action to try and protect her daughter.

“There was no hesitation at all. I don’t even think I thought about anything. I think you just, like as a mom, you just try to protect your kid,” she said.

Arizona Game and Fish officials say they do not know why the coyote attacked.

“It’s really not clear as to why the coyote decided to do this,” said Alex Flickinger, the public affairs community liaison for the agency. Several coyotes were removed from the neighborhood following the attack to be tested for rabies. It was not immediately clear if any tested positive.

Flickinger said that Cardinal responded the way people are supposed to when a coyote attacks.

“You fight back, you yell at the animal, be loud with it, throw rocks, whatever you have to do to get that animal to just run off,” Flickinger said.