Neighbour recounts helping Winnipeg boy attacked, injured by coyote

A nine-year-old Winnipeg boy is at home recovering after being mauled by a coyote on the northern edge of the city Saturday evening in what police describe as an exceedingly rare event. 

The boy and his sister, 15, were walking in the area of Popko Crescent and Knowles Avenue when they noticed the animal, which chased them when they ran from it, according to a Sunday news release from Winnipeg police.

The boy was mauled before someone in the area chased the coyote away, police said.

That someone was Logan Funk, 18, who told CBC he heard the boy screaming on his front street around 6:45 p.m. He looked out his living room window, saw the coyote chasing the boy and said he knew he had to act. 

"This is a little kid … people need to go out there and help this boy, right? It could have been worse," said Funk. 

Funk ran outside and screamed at the animal, which ran away into a nearby yard about 20 metres away. 

Funk said he then ran to get a neighbour to help and to get water and paper towel for the boy, who had "marks" on the back of his head. 

Noticing the coyote was still lingering nearby, Funk said he grabbed a shovel and chased it off into a nearby street. 

Soon after, his driveway was flooded with neighbours who had come to help, he said, and police and paramedics arrived shortly as well. 

The boy had suffered "significant injuries" to his upper and lower body and was taken to hospital, Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson Const. Jason Michalyshen said.

The boy's family said in an email to CBC that they are grateful to their neighbours for helping their child, but sitting in the hospital for hours afterward only added to the trauma he had already experienced.

"Our health-care system is broken and isn't robust enough to handle one serious injury in a timely manner," wrote the family, who asked for privacy and declined an interview.

"Our poor boy sat with an open scalp for hours, which lengthened the trauma he had already endured and made treating the gaping wound on his head that much more difficult," they said.

The family said the boy waited nearly three hours to see a nurse at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre, and nearly six hours for treatment. He was treated with staples and stitches to his scalp, was given a rabies shot and sent home early Sunday morning.