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6-year-old girl, woman, bit by fox, officials say

By CNN

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    WORCESTER, Massachusetts (WCVB) — Two people, including a young girl, were bitten by a fox on Thursday in Worcester, Massachusetts, officials said.

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.

“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.

She was taken to a local hospital with injuries to her foot and is expected to be OK.

Police said the fox was euthanized, and it will be sent to state officials for rabies testing.

This was not the only fox attack in Worcester.

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

She told NewsCenter 5 she was nearly dragged away by the fox.

“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.”

Pagan-Williams’s brother saw the commotion and kicked the fox away.

“As soon as it bit my arm, it was trying to drag me,” she said. “I was like, really, really, scared.”

It’s unclear if it was the same fox that bit Bottom on Thursday.

Both Pagan-Williams and Bottom received rabies shots at the hospital.

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Inside ‘the Pool’: Fugitive arrested in alleged cross-border car trade scheme

▶ Watch Video: On the ground look from Eagle Pass, Texas, as illegal border crossings remain historically low Along the Texas-Mexico border, it's known as "the Pool." And this week, federal authorities say they caught one of the men accused of helping run it.Every year, drivers known as transmigrantes transport used cars bought in the United States through Mexico to be resold in Central America. Federal prosecutors say a group of South Texas businessmen found a way to monopolize the industry that took those cars across the border — fixing the fees, pooling their revenues and squeezing businesses that refused to comply. At the center of the scheme, authorities say, was Carlos Martinez, a Mission, Texas, businessman known as "Cuate" who controlled the transmigrante forwarding agency near the Los Indios border crossing in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. Prosecutors allege Martinez — the son-in-law of a former notorious Gulf Cartel leader — helped turn a cluster of supposedly competing businesses into a tightly controlled network of fixed prices, shared revenue, cash payments and intimidation. He pleaded guilty to federal charges and was sentenced to prison time.Working alongside him, prosecutors allege, was Rigoberto Brown, a dual U.S.-Mexican citizen who served in managerial roles on Martinez's behalf, helping him pull off the alleged scheme. Brown was charged in November 2022 with conspiring to fix prices and divide the market and with conspiring to monopolize the transmigrante forwarding business. Then he disappeared.For nearly four years, authorities say, Brown lived as a fugitive in Mexico. This week, they caught him near McAllen, Texas. He is set to be arraigned Friday in federal court in Houston. An alleged price-fixing 'empresa'For years, much of the traffic moved by transmigrantes was funneled through one place.Before March 2021, Mexican regulations required commerce to enter Mexico through the Los Indios Port of Entry in South Texas, according to the federal indictment. That created a concentrated industry around the crossing, where forwarding agencies helped drivers handle the customs paperwork and other requirements needed to get their vehicles into Mexico.Thousands of vehicles moved through the system, generating millions of dollars a year in forwarding agency revenue, according to prosecutors. Federal authorities allege a group of operators found a way to control it.Beginning as early as 2011, prosecutors say, forwarding agencies agreed on prices instead of competing for customers, choosing to inflate prices and divide the market among themselves.Participating businesses allegedly collected their revenues centrally and divided the money according to agreed-upon percentages. Prosecutors say the operation was so organized, participants used charts and spreadsheets to keep track of the arrangement and communicated about prices and revenues throughout meetings and in calls, texts and exchanges on social media and messaging applications.Some participants referred to the collective enterprise as the "empresa" — Spanish for "the company" — according to the indictment. But prosecutors say controlling prices was only one part of the operation.Vehicles carrying secondhand cars and other goods line up in Los Indios, Texas, as they prepare to go through Mexico on Dec. 19, 2006. Many of the transmigrantes come from as far as Washington, New York and California. AP/Valley Morning Star, Gabe Hernandez
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