NH Father And Daughter Attacked By Rabid Fox
DERRY, N.H. (CBS) – Tests confirm a fox that attacked a 10-year-old Derry, N.H., girl and her father was rabid.
Lauren DiPerri was at O'Hara Field with her softball team Wednesday night when the fox emerged from the woods and latched onto her leg.
"It was grabbing on, you could feel his little arms around my whole leg, trying to get to my ankles and biting me," DiPerri told WBZ-TV in an exclusive interview.
Lauren had been standing at the edge of the woods with her teammates.
Her father Brian DiPerri, the team's coach, came to her rescue and was attacked himself.
"It lunged at my legs, not more than a foot and a half in front of me," he said, revealing several scratch marks on his legs.
All the while Lauren says she tried to run, but the fox kept coming back even as her teammates tried to pull her.
She finally latched onto her father who swung her around and an assistant coach was able to kick the fox off her leg.
Fearing for the safety of others, Brian DiPerri says he made a difficult decision to use his own firearm and shoot the animal.
"It was a split second decision, something you don't want to do. But if it had gotten back to a group of kids it could have been pretty serious," he said.
The attack has raised a safety concern at the field about whether there's a den in the area, which is something the town is now investigating.
Lauren says she won't soon forget the look of her attacker.
Father and daughter are now getting a series of rabies shots for the next several weeks.