By Jennifer Glickel and Jim Scott
DNAinfo Staff
TRIBECA — The NYPD finally corralled one of the wily coyotes that have been running wild across Manhattan.
Police received multiple calls late Thursday morning from residents who saw the coyote running along West Street, police said. They chased it into a parking lot on the corner of West and Watts streets and called in the Emergency Services Unit.
"I had seen it come into the parking lot, but thought it was a dog," said parking lot attendant Eklas Chowdhury. "Stray cats and dogs wander in here from time to time, so I didn't think anything of it."
Emergency Services officers found the female coyote hiding under a car, and then shot her with a tranquilizer gun, police said.
They then pulled her out from under the car and took it to an Animal Care and Control facility on the Upper East Side.
"The cops caught it and treated it nicely," Chowdhury added. "They put it in a cage and took it away."
Residents tweeted about Wednesday's sighting on Twitter and tracked the animal from the tunnel to Warren and Greenwich Streets in TriBeCa, before it headed south on Varick and Thomas streets, ABC 7 reported.
Coyotes had been spotted four other times in Manhattan in recent weeks before Wednesday's sighting. Police caught a coyote in Washington Heights in January, and another one was found loitering around Columbia University in February.
Earlier this month, a coyote escaped from police who attempted to catch the animal in Chelsea.
Witnesses who saw the coyote wander into the parking lot on Thursday morning didn't think anything of the animal until police took action, like Jacques Capsouto who owns Capsouto Freres restaurant on Watts Street.
"When I saw the cops swarm into the lot, I made the connection that it was the coyote I'd read about this morning in the paper," Capsouto said.
"When I saw it come from the West Side Highway into the lot I didn't realize it was anything other than a dog. It was tired and dragging its feet."
Residents were largely unconcerned about the presence of a coyote in their neighborhood.
"It doesn't scare me because coyotes aren't predatory toward humans" said Neil, who lives up the street from the parking lot and declined to give his last name.
"I don't have any sheep to protect."
