She said she was attacked by a pack of frenzied dogs.
Five pit bull-mixed breeds that live at the house near where Bookamer was mauled in western Flagler County made up the dangerous pack, authorities said. The dogs remain caged at the Flagler Humane Society.
“It's just rough,” said James “Donny” Hays, who owns the dogs and the property at 6217 Mahogany Blvd. where the attack took place. “I don't know what triggered them to do this. They've never done something like this before.”
Four of the confiscated dogs were sharing the same cage at the shelter Monday. They were playing together, climbing over each other and wagging their tails whenever someone approached their kennel.
A fifth dog was placed in a separate kennel because of a serious leg injury.
“I feel horrible,” said Bookamer, who answered the phone in her room at Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach. She said she remembers being attacked by “five pit bulls” but declined to speak further and hung up.
Hays surrendered the animals to the county because he could not afford the quarantine fees, according to Flagler County Animal Control officials. The county charges $150 per dog for a 10-day quarantine.
The Sheriff's Office is investigating.
“The deputy who wrote the report indicated there was blood on one of the snouts of one of the dogs,” said sheriff's spokesman Lt. Bob Weber.
The deputy also stated in his report that the same dog, which he described as “lighter in color,” had blood on its right front leg. Hays told deputies a car had struck the dog and that's why it had a wounded leg.
Diane Voigt, president of the Flagler Humane Society board of directors, said the injured dog was in the house when deputies responded Sunday and nowhere near the injured woman.
“It's a pretty safe bet she had nothing to do with it,” said Voigt.
Both she and the animal control officer on Monday questioned whether the five dogs at the shelter had anything to do with the attack. A shelter veterinarian recently spayed and neutered the dogs and inserted microchips in them, Voigt said.
Bookamer, 27, and her 6-year-old daughter were walking near the intersection of Mahogany Boulevard and Holly Lane about 8 p.m. Sunday when the dogs zeroed in on the mother, deputies said. When the dogs attacked, her daughter ran to a neighbor's house.
The 6-year-old later told deputies she saw “mean and scary” dogs bite her “mommy,” according to a Sheriff's Office report. The girl was uninjured, deputies said.
“She's more scared than anything,” said the girl's grandfather, Moe Bookamer. The mother and daughter live with him down the road from the attack off Holly Lane.
He said he has seen the same dogs act aggressively toward him.
“I'm sure (the owner) loves his dogs but if he has dogs like that, he has to keep them on a leash,” said Bookamer.
Bookamer said his daughter has several leg wounds but none of her injuries are life-threatening. She was listed in satisfactory condition Monday, according to the Sheriff's Office.
As she was being attacked, Brandi Bookamer cried for help and a man who lives a short distance away -- and outside his house smoking a cigar -- heard Bookamer's screams and ran toward the noise, witnesses said. Meanwhile, a different neighbor called 9-1-1.
The cigar-smoking man, who was wielding a pellet gun, and a woman from a different home who heard the screams ran to where Bookamer was being attacked, deputies said. The man fired his gun in the air twice to scare away the dogs.
The woman who ran to Bookamer's aid was 32-year-old nursing student Kelly Maxwell. She said she was visiting a friend in the neighborhood when she heard the screams.
“We got to the corner where (it) happened,” she said. “You couldn't see the lady, just hear her screaming for help and all I saw was five pit bulls attacking her.”
Bookamer was lying in a ditch filled with rainwater. Maxwell said Bookamer apparently had jumped into the ditch in an effort to get away from the dogs.
“She kept saying she was dying, but I (reassured) her help was on the way and I wasn't leaving her side until they got there,” Maxwell said. “They attacked her arms, legs, chest, neck, buttocks. Anywhere they could bite, they bit.”
Susan Riddle, 53, the neighbor who called 9-1-1, said Bookamer was almost totally submerged in the water while the dogs were attacking her.
Those who came to Bookamer's aid covered her with a sheet and a denim jacket. Riddle on Monday found the same denim jacket in a trash can in front of the house on Mahogany. She held it up to show the bloodstains.
Riddle's husband, Bill, said the dogs at the Mahogany house often get loose and run onto his property but all they do is beg for food and run around with his dogs in their yard.
“We were never afraid of those dogs, but we never encountered them as a pack of five,” he said. “We usually saw two or three at a time.”
Voigt said the four dogs that were being caged together — the same group sheriff's deputies believe attacked Bookamer — had no blood on them when animal control confiscated them.
“That's quite a surprise, given the viciousness of the attack,” she said.
[Check the contents of their stomachs or do mouth swabs. I'm sure they licked the blood off each other.]
Animal Control Officer Anthony McKay said the area where the attack took place, known as Daytona North, has a lot of loose dogs. They often roam in packs. Whenever dogs are in packs, their personalities can change dramatically, he said.
But when he came to the house Sunday night to confiscate the dogs, he said they showed no signs of aggressiveness.
“They all met me like they knew me,” McKay said.
Voigt said the dogs are being assessed to see whether they should be considered dangerous. If they aren't considered dangerous, they could be available for adoption but several more steps have to be taken before that can happen, she said. Either way, they could still wind up being euthanized.
The Flagler Humane Society is not a no-kill shelter. The length of time from when a dog is deemed adoptable to when it is put down varies depending on how well the dog handles being confined, said Voigt.
She said roughly 60 percent of the dogs brought to the shelter are pit bulls or pit bull-mixed breeds.
Hays, along with Peggy Collins, who lives on the Mahogany property and also cares for the dogs, said two pit bulls they previously owned were confiscated by animal control and euthanized because they were considered dangerous.
They said they have always cooperated whenever animal control comes to the house.
“I feel so sorry for that girl,” Collins said. “I hope she's all right.”
Weber said the investigation is still in the early stages. If a dog previously declared dangerous bites a person or domestic animal, the owner could be arrested and face up to one year in jail, according to Florida law.
Maxwell said she is haunted by what she saw Sunday night.
“I just couldn't stop thinking about (those dogs) and what the little girl must be feeling as she had to run away from her mom after watching the dogs start to attack her,” she said.
(Daytona Beach News Journal - May 6, 2013)
