MASSACHUSETTS -- Before police arrived on scene, witnesses say the pit bull attacked a woman, drawing blood, then crouched low and, unprovoked, charged another resident who jumped on the hood of his car to escape.
Police arrived about 5:20 p.m. Tuesday to find the light brown pit bull, named Capone, mulling about on the sidewalk in front of 324 Prospect St.
They watched him for a moment to see what he would do. Then he charged again, this time at officers.
Brockton police fired one shot, hitting the dog in the leg. The dog then bounded over a 4-foot chain-link fence and burrowed into a hole he had dug underneath his doghouse. On the fence was a “Beware of Dog” sign.
The pit bull attack is the most recent in a string of horror stories about the breed in the surrounding area.
On July 1, officers pulled one dead pit bull and three others barely alive from the backyard of a Montello Street home. They had been left without food and water on a day when temperatures reached into the 90s. Two of those dogs were later retrained but one had to be euthanized after she showed no signs of being social toward humans.
In Whitman in May, a pit bull mauled a man’s arm during a Memorial Day barbecue on Harvard Street also in an apparent unprovoked attack.
And in Bridgewater in December, a pit bull was euthanized immediately after a horrific attack to a woman’s face inside the family’s home.
Witnesses on Tuesday said they had never seen a dog act like that unprovoked.
“It got low to the ground like a panther,” said Alacia DeMonte, a 29-year-old who lives across the street from where the attack happened.
“Obviously, it felt threatened because it was his house and everyone was kind of surrounding him. But he got really close to the officer before he shot him,” she said.
“The dog was walking away,” added 25-year-old David Park, who lives with DeMonte across the street. “Then suddenly the thing just spun around and went after him.”
The neighbor the pit bull first charged declined to comment. But witnesses said he shut his car door quickly to protect his son, then jumped on the hood of the car to get away.
Just before that, Brockton police Sgt. James Baroud said he received two 911 calls reporting a woman had been attacked. She was walking home down Prospect Street, when “without any provocation whatsoever, the dog attacked her,” Baroud said.
The woman, whose name was not released because she is a victim, was bitten on her forearm and suffered injuries not believed to be life-threatening, police said.
On Tuesday evening, Baroud said it was too early to know whether the woman would need rabies shots.
The pit bull was not vaccinated, and police say he was also not registered in the city.
The dog’s owner, 23-year-old Michael DePina, faces fines for both violations and a fine for a leash-law violation.
“That’s most certainly not the end of the investigation,” said Baroud, who added that the investigation was to continue first thing this morning.
There are more dogs at the residence, Baroud added.
DePina arrived on scene after the attack, and took Capone to the vet immediately where Baroud said the dog will likely be kept, and could be euthanized.
DePina declined to comment for this story.
(Enterprise News - Sept 12, 2012)
