By then, it’s too late. Pilar can only gasp, “Don’t move.”
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| Pilar Moreira holds a picture of her daughter Melissa, who was severely injured in the pit bull attack. The mother was bitten in the arm while trying to stop the dog. Roberto Schmidt/Miami Herald |
She still gasps 23 years later, as she tells her story, still overwhelmed by that brutal sense of helplessness. “All…all I could do was say, ‘Don’t move.’ ”
It’s Presidents’ Day, 1989, and she and 7-year-old Melissa are returning from a weekend visit to Disney World. What awaits them, lurking in the front yard of their home in West Kendall, is the culminating horror after a series of pit bull attacks across South Florida.
It’s this incident, as much as any, that prompts the Dade Metro Commission (as it was then construed) to unanimously pass an ordinance with this preamble: “Whereas, in recent months Dade County has experienced a tragic series of incidents in which citizens have been attacked and seriously injured by pit bull dogs.”
The Florida Legislature, led by Rep. Carlos Trujillo of Miami, seems bent on undoing Miami-Dade’s ban on pit bulls. Bills in both the House and Senate are moving toward eventual passage. The House State Affairs Committee approved Trujillo’s bill on Friday. (Trujillo and his cohorts in the legislature ignored an offer by the Miami-Dade Commission to, instead, allow county voters decide whether to retain the pit bull ban in a referendum.)
Trujillo’s meddling in local government stunned Pilar Moreira (now Pilar Garcia, after remarrying).
“When I heard this I was very, very angry. Don’t they know how dangerous these dogs are? What kind of damage they can do?”
She knows. The memory’s stuck in a perpetual loop. That horrible moment when the dog charges her daughter. It remains, always, in the present tense.
Her neighbor has been keeping a number of pit bulls penned in his unfenced back yard, a long source of unease, Pilar says, but she and her husband are reluctant to confront the man. Someone embedded in the savage, violent culture of dog fighting does not invite confrontation.
She knows when she sees the animal that one of his fighting dogs escaped its backyard pen. Without warning, it attacks Melissa.
“It goes right for her face,” she says. The dog knocks the girl over and rips at her head. Pilar screams and tries, futilely to pull it away. The pit bull momentarily turns on Pilar, slashing her left arm. Amada Pozo, her mother-in-law, rushes out of the house and tries to help. The dog goes after Pozo’s face, severing her nose. John Amat, 22, tries to wrestle the pit bull off Melissa. The dog bites his hand and turns back on the child.
The dog seems oblivious to human efforts to dislodge him from the girl. And in that frenzied moment, the animal perfectly reflects the creature that would be described in the county ordinance — the ban Rep. Trujillo seeks to abolish — just a few months later.
“Whereas, to increase its effectiveness as a fighter, certain pit bull traits have been selected and maximized by controlled breeding, including 1) a set of powerful jaws with an exceptional ability to grip, lock and tear when the dog bites; 2) a unique insensitivity to pain that causes pit bulls to be exceedingly tenacious in the attack; 3) an unusually aggressive temperament towards human beings and animals; and 4) an extraordinary directness in their method of attack that does not include the common warning signs such as barking or growling displayed by other breeds.”
Nothing deters the dog until Pilar throws a canvas car cover over the frenzied animal. Then a neighbor, running up with a pistol, shoots the dog four times before killing it.
Melissa, covered in blood and dog saliva, has lost her lower lip. Her face seems to have been nearly ripped away from her skull. As they rush her inside the house, pieces of her scalp fall to the floor. Both arms had been savaged.
At Kendall Regional Medical Center, pronounced in critical condition, Melissa’s very survival is in question. Over the next months, eight surgeries would be required to reconstruct her face. The scars never go away.
Pilar and her mother-in-law both must undergo their own surgical procedures. The hospital bills exceed $50,000.
Twenty-three years later, Pilar says her daughter, now a hospital administrator in Miami, still carries the physical scars but recovered, at least psychologically, better than her mother. The horror of those moments, unable to pull that relentless dog off her little girl, haunts Pilar.
This talk of rescinding the ban exacerbates her old fears. The dogs effected by the ban in Miami-Dade County, of course, are only hypothetical dogs. No actual pit bulls, 23 years after the ban was enacted, can reside in the county. Not legally anyway. Pit bull enthusiasts, unless they’re flouting the law, want the right to own a dangerous breed, not a particular animal. Not an actual pet.
Their argument that “pit bull” is a vague, too loose, inexact definition that entails at least three breeds was dismissed back in 1989, when a coalition of pit bull owners challenged the new ordinance in federal court. U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler noted, “Despite plaintiffs’ contention that there is no such animal as a pit bull, plaintiffs’ own experts have written articles about their pedigreed dogs referring to them by the common nickname of pit bull.”
“At trial,” the judge wrote, “these experts identified photographs of dogs as pit bulls, rather than delineating the dogs into any one of the three breeds recognized by the kennel clubs. Moreover, veterinarians commonly identify dogs as pit bulls — rather than one of the three recognized breeds — by their physical characteristics.”
Judge Hoeveler added, “There was ample testimony that most people know what breed their dogs are. Although the plaintiffs and their experts claim that the ordinance does not give them enough guidance to enable owners to determine whether their dogs fall within its scope, the evidence established that the plaintiffs themselves often use the term ‘pit bull’ as a shorthand method of referring to their dogs. Numerous magazine and newspaper articles, including articles in dog fancier magazines, refer to pit bull dogs. Veterinarians typically refer to the three recognized breeds and mixed breeds with conforming characteristics as pit bulls.”
Pit bulls are not a mystery designation. Nor are their dangers attributes a fictional invention. And when they attack children or pets after Tallahassee lifts the ban, Rep. Trujillo should get all the credit.
“Before we had this ban, people had to pay so much, financially, emotionally, psychologically, because of these dogs,” said Pilar Garcia. “Don’t they know?”
(Miami Herald - Feb 25, 2012)
