Twin's arm 'looked like it had been through a cheese grater' after fox entered home, say Pauline and Nick Koupparis in TV interview
The parents of the twins attacked by a fox in their east London home have given their first detailed account of the incident, describing one of the girls' arms as looking "like it had been through a cheese grater".
Lola Koupparis suffered facial and arm injuries in the attack on 5 June, while her sister Isabella was bitten on the arm.
Pauline and Nick Koupparis recount the events of the evening in a BBC programme tonight, describing how a family weekend was brought to an abrupt end by their daughters' cries.
"I went into the room and they were both crying. Isabella was head down in her cot," Pauline Koupparis told the BBC.
"I noticed some blood and I thought maybe she'd had a nosebleed, so I put the night light on and as I put the night light on I saw the fox at the end of Lola's cot.
"And then I saw that Lola was covered in blood as well. And I literally just wailed, screamed, I don't know how to describe it and then I heard Nick running up the stairs".
The couple said the severity of Isabella's injuries became apparent upon removal of the child's garment.
"Her arm was open and bits of her flesh were literally, like, just dropping onto Nick's leg," Pauline said.
"That's how I can remember. It's just … it looked like it had been through a cheese grater".
In the two weeks following the attack, six foxes were trapped in the Koupparis family's garden, removed and humanely destroyed. Acting on police advice, the local authority had called in a pest control specialist.
This week the girls' parents learned the prognosis of their injuries. Both are likely to be permanently scarred, while Isabella – whose left arm and hand were severely injured – will continue to see specialists until her late teens.
Pauline and Nick Koupparis said they gave the go-ahead for tonight's programme, which is produced by Leopard Films, where Nick is head of finance, because they wanted to give a single definitive account of their experience to dispel some of the myths that have already built up around the attack on their daughters.
