An Arizona mom found herself in a terrifying fight for survival after a coyote suddenly attacked her 4-year-old daughter — forcing her to battle the wild animal with nothing but a flip-flop.
Brittany Cardinal, 35, said she and her daughter were outside their Surprise, Arizona, home on Sept. 6 enjoying the windy afternoon when the little girl asked to fly a kite.
Within seconds, the peaceful moment turned into a nightmare.
Cardinal suddenly heard her daughter scream and spun around to see a coyote going after the child.
She immediately grabbed her daughter and began yelling at the animal, expecting it to run away.
It didn’t.
With the coyote refusing to back down, Cardinal ripped off her flip-flop and began swinging it at the animal while screaming and desperately trying to scare it away.
“There was no hesitation at all,” Cardinal said. “I don’t even think I thought about anything. I think you, like a mom, try to protect your kid.”
The attack quickly became even more frightening.
Cardinal fell to the ground during the struggle, giving the coyote an opening to lunge at her and clamp its jaws onto her face.
She said she barely felt pain in the moment because adrenaline had taken over.
“I just felt like the pressure of it,” she recalled.
Despite suffering facial injuries, Cardinal kept fighting.
She and her daughter were eventually able to back away from the animal and race toward their home for safety.
Cardinal was left with puncture wounds and cuts to her face, but her daughter escaped the terrifying encounter without serious injuries.
Arizona Game and Fish officials said the incident was the first recorded coyote attack on a person in the Phoenix area since December 2023.
Authorities said they still do not know what caused the unusually aggressive behavior.
Wildlife officials have since removed several coyotes from the area and are testing them for rabies.
Officials said Cardinal did exactly what people are advised to do during an aggressive coyote encounter — fight back, yell, make noise and use anything available to scare the animal away.
“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,” Arizona Game and Fish official Alex Flickinger said.
Cardinal says she has no intention of being caught defenseless again.
She now carries pepper spray whenever she goes outside.
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