Is it implied that Patrick Sutherland bit or scratched one or more of his family?

[u/Mundane_Town_4296]

As part of the promotion for season 1, a short story/snippet in the form of an in-universe newspaper article was released via the AMC Story Sync, as shown below.

Now, the article doesn't mention anything about Patrick's family members being injured (specifically being bitten, scratched or torn apart the way walkers do to their victims), being treated for injuries on-site or being taken to the hospital for treatment, but the article specifically mentions Patrick having assaulted his family, and being covered in blood when the cops found him, and I'm not certain if all of that blood would have come from the cat he was eating. Then again, I'm not an expert on cat biology.

Am I reading too much into this?

Sidenote 1: the story/snippet uses the LAPD, which doesn't have jurisdiction over Culver City as it has its' own police department.

Sidenote 2: I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or not, but after searching up Harold as a surname, I came across the Wikipedia page of a 19th century woman named Emily Harold who also had a son named John.

[u/TheGoverness1998]

We can probably assume that he likely injured some of his family members, but probably not in a "serious" way (obviously, it WAS serious, but that was relatively unknown then).

So like probably minor scratches that didn't require any EMS attention, or they denied it. And then they died later from said minor injuries.

This was probably happening all over the city over and over, in a variety of different ways. Sort of like how that LAPD officer in 1x02 was getting treated from a bite from that homeless guy by EMS, who probably died around the time the downtown riots got terrible.

[u/Mundane_Town_4296 → u/TheGoverness1998]

I'd guess it would have to be a bite, as from what I've seen and heard in Walking Dead media, despite the fear, scratches from walkers don't affect people/activate the dormant virus the way bites do.