Driving down Wiebke Street on Wednesday afternoon around 3 p.m., Eley looked out his window and saw an 11-year-old boy being attacked by two dogs. He didn't pause. He pulled over and headed into the open lot. Arming himself with a glass bottle he found on the ground, he charged in. The dogs quickly turned from the boy to the 50-year-old man, biting him on both legs.
“I just picked up a bottle and started beating on them, and they attacked me,” Eley said.
What Eley didn't know was just around the block at Brownlee and Son's Grocery, 613 Oxford St., a woman in her 70s had been the first to be attacked.
According to owner Thomas Brownlee, Virgie Banks was just walking down the street when one of the dogs took a serious bite out of her leg. She was able to get into the store away from the two dogs. Brownlee reported the attack.
“That bite was down to the bone,” Brownlee said.
When Fort Wayne Police and Animal Control officers arrived on the scene, they shot the dogs. One died instantly and the other was chased down within a block and dispatched. Officers on the scene said had Eley not stopped, things could have been much worse for the boy.
All three victims were transported to a local hospital.
Belinda Lewis, director of Animal Care and Control-Fort Wayne, said the boy who was attacked had been playing with some other kids in a vacant lot across from 450 E. Wiebke St.
So far, officials don't know who the dogs' owner is. Neither dog was microchipped. One had on a collar with no ID tags, and the other had no collar at all. Because of the serious nature of the attack, Lewis said criminal charges will likely be pressed; however, the investigation is still ongoing.
Under Indiana code, the charge would be a Class C misdemeanor, described in the law as occurring when an owner recklessly, knowingly or intentionally fails to take reasonable steps to restrain the dog; as the result of the owner's failure to restrain the dog, the dog bites or attacks another person without provocation, resulting in bodily injury to the other person.
Lewis said any help the public can give in identifying the owner of the dogs would be very helpful.
One dog is described as a 2-year-old male pit bull, mainly white with light tan markings. The other dog is believed to be under 1 year old, mainly brown with a few markings like a beagle. Animal Control officers believe the dog is a pit bull-beagle mix.
Anyone with information on this incident can call Animal Care and Control-City of Fort Wayne at 427-1244, option #1.
(News-Sentinel - February 22, 2012)
