{"id":813406,"date":"2026-08-14T13:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T13:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/813406\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T13:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T13:42:13","slug":"6-year-old-girl-woman-bit-by-fox-in-worcester-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/813406\/","title":{"rendered":"6-year-old girl, woman, bit by fox in Worcester, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"

6-year-old girl, woman, bit by fox in Worcester, officials say<\/p>\n

\"Jennifer<\/a>\"Peter<\/a>WORCESTER, Mass. \u2014<\/p>\n

Two people, including a young girl, were bitten by a fox on Thursday in Worcester, Massachusetts, officials said.<\/p>\n

A woman said she was attacked by a gray fox around 8:45 a.m. behind a residence on Granite Street while she was playing with her grandchildren. <\/p>\n

“I see something out of the corner of my eye and I didn’t have time to run so I just kicked, and it grabbed my foot and I tussled with it for a second to, like, get it off my foot and I just yanked it by the nape of the neck and I threw it across the yard,” Zena Bottom told NewsCenter 5.<\/p>\n

She was taken to a local hospital with injuries to her foot and is expected to be OK.<\/p>\n

Police said the fox was euthanized, and it will be sent to state officials for rabies testing. <\/p>\n

This was not the only fox attack in Worcester.<\/p>\n

Video below: Victims describe attacks<\/p>\n

On Wednesday night, authorities said a Janessa Pagan-Williams, 6, was bitten on the arm, finger, and leg, also on Granite Street.<\/p>\n

She told NewsCenter 5 she was nearly dragged away by the fox. <\/p>\n

“It growled at me, and then it came charging at my leg and it made me fall off the bike,” Pagan-Williams said. “It was biting my leg a little bit and then it got off my leg and it started biting my arm. After it went on my arm it made the tissue come out because it bit really hard. It went deep, deep, deep, into the tissue.”<\/p>\n

Pagan-Williams’s brother saw the commotion and kicked the fox away.<\/p>\n

“As soon as it bit my arm, it was trying to drag me,” she said. “I was like, really, really, scared.”<\/p>\n

It’s unclear if it was the same fox that bit Bottom on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Both Pagan-Williams and Bottom received rabies shots at the hospital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"6-year-old girl, woman, bit by fox in Worcester, officials say WORCESTER, Mass. \u2014 Two people, including a young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":813407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[17862,14144,27117,6265,345051,97,1493,10156,2001,9585,1583,345052,39142,22217,173308,16597,24370,28123,11270,52276],"class_list":["post-813406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-a-m","tag-animal","tag-foot","tag-fox","tag-granite-street","tag-health","tag-hospital","tag-injury","tag-massachusetts","tag-official","tag-police","tag-rabie-testing","tag-rabies","tag-residence","tag-state-officials","tag-thursday","tag-victim","tag-wcvb","tag-woman","tag-worcester"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}