MICHIGAN --- Their is blood on a pair of 58-year-old Walter Rayford's sweat pants after a neighbor's pit bull attacked him and his ten-year-old granddaughter's puppy named Bella.
"I see the dog's face. I hear the screams," said Walter Rayford.
"She looked me in my eyes, like momma help me, and I couldn't help her," said Yolanda Rayford, Walter's daughter-in-law.
Bella was so bad off, she had to be put to sleep after the pit bull attacked Saturday, and Walter Rayford is haunted by what happened.
"I heard the noise, and I looked up and I seen this thing coming at me," Rayford explained. "About 50 pounds of muscle that was hell bent on doing what it wanted to do."
"I was out there when it happened. I was beating my own dog, so it's not like I don't care. I was very apologetic that day," said Melanie Brown, the pit bull's owner.
"We were wrestling. We were tussling in the dirt and on the sidewalk, in the street," Walter Rayford said.
The dog was biting.
"I started beating the dog," Walter Rayford told us.
"As I'm down there wrestling and beating my dog and the neighbor is beating my dog as well. We [were] trying to save his pet, not mine," Brown said.
"A friend of mine came up with the ... blow torch lit and actually put it to the dog's skin, and I seen the dog's skin begin to turn brown, but it did not phase him. I tried to choke the dog. I put the chain around his throat. I did everything I could," said Walter Rayford.
He was not thinking about himself, but just wanted to protect Bella because he didn't want to disappoint his granddaughter.
"At night, I see the puppy. I see my granddaughter. I let my granddaughter down," Walter Rayford told us.
He said his wife called 911.
"Nobody showed up," Walter Rayford said.
His son went to the police station to file a report, and he told us he also went to give his firsthand account, but felt like nobody cared.
"It was like I wasn't even there, even though I was standing in front of them," Walter Rayford explained.
"You need to care. You have constituents here that are paying taxes that they need help when they call," Yolanda Rayford said.
They wanted animal control to come, the cops, somebody because what if this dog went after somebody else?
"I had to put my baby to sleep, and that dog's still breathing. There's injustice there," Yolanda Rayford told us.
"I would just put mine down. That's what I've been thinking about since it first happened," said Brown.
(MyfoxDetroit - Oct 26, 2011)
