Perhaps nothing is more terrifying as a parent than knowing your children are unsafe in their own home.
It is a feeling that Philadelphia mother Ashley Rodgers knows all too well after her four-month-old baby girl was brutally mauled by a raccoon in their newly-rented rooming house.
GoFundMe
They had moved into the unit just a few days prior.
“My daughter was laying on the bed sleeping and I went to take my son to the bathroom,” Ashley told CBS Philly. “We heard a sound upstairs and we see a raccoon run down the steps.”
By the time she got to her daughter, Journi, the rodent had already torn her off the bed and dragged her to the other side of the bedroom.
GoFundMe
“When I finally got to her, she was laying on the floor so it had dragged her off the bed, across the room, and she was bleeding and crying and her whole face was red,” reported the devastated mother.
Journi was quickly rushed to the hospital where doctors mended her facial wounds with 65 stitches, but they warned Ashley that her full recovery could take as long as a year.
GoFundMe
Thankfully, the four-month-old fighter was released from the hospital on Christmas day, just five days after the attack.
GoFundMe
“It’s a good Christmas gift,” said her grateful mama, who now intends to seek legal action against the landlord who ignored numerous complaints by tenants of raccoon infestation.
“It is his (the landlord’s) responsibility,” added Journi’s father, Samuel Black. “There’s no reason an animal should have gotten into the house with minors.”
GoFundMe
In the meantime, the family has received an unexpected influx of generosity from strangers across the country who are trying to get little Journi in a safe home.