UNITED KINGDOM -- Netherton dad-of-five Geoffrey Daley savaged by a pit bull today said he feared the crazed dog would kill him.
Geoffrey spent more than 16 hours under anaesthetic over the past eight days undergoing three operations in two different hospitals.
The 48-year-old was mauled so badly surgeons removed blood vessels from his leg to replace the ones torn from his arm in the attack. He also had more than 50 stitches in his left hand.
Geoffrey’s ordeal was reported in the ECHO. But today he spoke for the first time about his terrifying ordeal which ended with girlfriend Natalie Burke, 35, cradling him in her arms and pleading for him to stay alive.
Speaking from his bed at Whiston Hospital the motor vehicle trader gave his backing to the ECHO’s Biteback campaign calling for tougher rules for dangerous dogs.
He said: “We’d been to the Chester Rocks music festival and had a great day out – and one of Natalie’s friends invited us round to their house for a drink.
“We were having a lovely night, I was outside talking to someone in the garden and the dog walked out so I put my hand out to pat its head. I wasn’t really looking at it and then, from the corner of my eye, I saw it running at me full speed, teeth bared and it just jumped up and attacked.”
Geoffrey, from Netherton, grappled with the dog in the garden as other partygoers screamed in horror.
The 5ft 11in, 15 stone LFC fan said: “It just latched on to me and wouldn’t let go. It was dragging me across the garden and I thought I was going to die, I thought ‘It will go for my head or neck next’.”
Other partygoers did their best to get the dog off him and Geoffrey was eventually taken indoors to wait for an ambulance.
Geoffrey added: “I don’t really remember anything. They were talking to me and saying stay with me and I was taken straight to the Royal.”
The police arrived at the address in Herculaneum Road, Toxteth, in the early hours of July 4 and took the dog away. It is still in a kennels on Merseyside awaiting its fate.
A 22-year-old man and 49-year-old woman were arrested on suspicion of owning a dog dangerously out of control in a public place. They were released on police bail pending further enquiries until September.
In the aftermath of the attack it emerged the dog had been subject to a destruction order in January last year. But a bench at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court ruled the animal, which is listed as a banned breed under the Dangerous Dogs Act, could return to its home as long as the owners observed a string of conditions.
Today Geoffrey criticised that decision adding: “I’m so angry with the magistrates. What were they thinking? If I had been a child, I’d be dead. It’s that simple. This has changed my life. I can’t go swimming or do any exercise. And the specialists say it could be 18 months before I get any feeling back in my arm, if I get it back at all.”
The ECHO’s Biteback campaign, launched in 2006, calls for the compulsory microchipping of all dogs – to ensure irresponsible owners can be traced– and life bans for anyone convicted of possessing a dangerous dog.
(Liverpool Echo - July 18, 2011)
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