FLORIDA -- A woman was riding her bicycle when she says she was attacked by a stray dog. Now she's speaking about her ordeal and neighbors are trying to figure out who's to blame.
Mary Lilly had already survived one dog bite. So, she says, when a pit bull attacked her Wednesday in her East Fort Myers neighborhood, it was like reliving her worst nightmare.
"He grabs my foot and pulls it off the pedal and I start screaming and hollering," she described. "It's like somebody come up and pulled a gun on you. You have that memory the rest of your life."
Lilly is OK, but Lee County Animal Control's Ria Brown says what's going on is not.
She says since September, officers have tried to catch the stray brown and white dog 20 times.
"The dog's going in the trap. We have reports of it in the trap; we can see it's been sprung. The foods been eaten and the dog's gone," said Brown.
Now neighbors are pointing fingers over who they feel is to blame.
The woman neighbors say feeds the dog and frees it from traps declined to speak on camera, but calls the accusations lies.
Another neighbor insisted the dog is harmless.
"He'll come up behind you and stay two feet behind you and if you turn around, he's gone," said one neighbor we spoke to Thursday.
But Lilly says after been bitten, she feels less safe taking a spin around her neighborhood.
"That dog needs to go," she said.
Animal Services will continue to try to catch the pit bull. And they say if they catch anyone tampering with their traps, they could face a $500 fine.
(NBC2 - Nov 17, 2011)
