Mother’s fears after baby girls mauled by fox

THE mother of baby twins mauled by a fox as they slept spoke of her fears for the girls as they recovered in hospital yesterday.

Nine-month-old girls Lola and Isabella Koupparis were attacked in their cots at around 10pm on Saturday night in Homerton, east London.

Police said the little girls were in a “serious but stable condition” at the Royal London Hospital.

They both suffered arm wounds and one is believed to have facial injuries.

Their mother Pauline said yesterday: “We’re just worried about them and making sure they’re OK. One is really good and one is not so good.”

She spoke as she left her smart three-storey terrace just after 10.30am yesterday, carrying a packet of nappies and looking anxious.

Clutching a teddy bear, she was driven away in a black BMW by the girls’ aunt, Barbara Koupparis.

The aunt added: “They are OK. I really can’t say anything.”

The fox apparently entered through a door on the ground floor which had been left open because of the heat.

The animal attacked the twins in their upstairs room as their parents, Nick and Pauline, were reportedly watching television.

Their four-year-old brother, Max, who was also sleeping upstairs, was not hurt.

A shocked neighbour of the family, who knows them well, described the girls as “beautiful”.

The woman, who lives next door but one and did not want to be named, said: “They’re beautiful little babies, really beautiful.

“We’ve all got foxes at the bottom of our gardens. Some people have got two or three living in their garden.

“They’re all as bold as brass. You walk out into the garden and you have to shoo them away.”

Asked if she was worried about the safety of her own little boy, who is a similar age to the twins, she said: “Of course, it was shocking.”

Michael Parra, 48, a health trainer, who has lived in the street for six years, said police had been going from house to house after the attack, warning residents not to leave their doors open.

He said: “Police told us that in the hot weather we should keep our doors closed for our safety.

“We see a lot of foxes around here. They’re always in our garden.

“Something should be done about them. I would love to get them out of here. They’re really a nuisance and a danger.”

He said he had complained about the fox problem to the local council but nothing had changed.

After the attack pest controllers set fox traps in the back garden.

A fox was discovered in one of the devices and was humanely destroyed by a vet early yesterday.

In 2002 Kent woman Sue Eastwood said her baby boy, Louis, was injured after a fox crept into their house while she slept.

Louis, 14 weeks old, suffered bite marks on his head after the animal crept into the sitting room of the house in Dartford.

Student Ozlem Pekcan, 21, who lives next door to the family, said she had discovered a fox in her house more than once.