KILLINGLY--The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has issued a warning to all swimmers and boaters to beware when in the Quinebaug River near the Route 101 bridge.
On Monday evening around 7 p.m. a 19-year-old woman and 20-year-old man, both from Danielson, were swimming in the river near the Pomfret-Killingly town line when an animal attacked them. The pair were bitten by an animal that they said looked like a beaver.
The two were taken to Day Kimball Hospital to get stitches for their injuries.
Friends of the victims, Karen Greb and Gahrett Bond, spoke to FOX 61 on Tuesday. Greb may still need surgery on her thumb, and both got rabies shots at the hospital. They also showed FOX 61 photos of the injuries, which were too gruesome for us to publish.
According to a public Facebook post by Greb, they were swimming when something "clamped down" on her rib cage. She explained the attack: "I shoved my hand in its mouth to get it to release me and it tore the ligament in my thumb." She said Bond then scared the beaver and pried it off her, and it released her but bit his leg.
"We did not provoke this beaver, we had no idea it was there because he attacked underwater," Greb said.
She said, "This is truly what nightmares are made of."
Environmental Conservation Police searched for the animal and did find a beaver acting aggressively near the bridge. Unfortunately, they couldn't catch the animal.
According to DEEP, there have been cases of both healthy beavers being aggressive to humans and beavers who had rabies acting abnormally, so it's not known if the animal that attacked was infected with rabies or not.
EnCon police said it did not appear that a beaver was making their home in the immediate area of the attack, but a beaver den was located in a bank of the river somewhat to the south of the location.
