GEORGIA -- A 26-year-old Athens man remained hospitalized on Monday, a day after he was attacked by three dogs while running through a northside neighborhood.
The man was running in the area of Freeman Drive and Nowhere Road about 8:30 a.m. Sunday when the dogs ran from a yard nearby and pounced on him, Athens-Clarke police said.
When officers arrived, the victim was lying on the ground, bleeding heavily from an estimated 20 bite wounds to his face, back, arms, legs and other areas of his body, according to police.
A witness told officers that the dog’s owner quickly took the dogs to a nearby residence, where he chained them behind a makeshift shack, police said.
There, officers found three bloodied dogs, which a police incident report described as pit bulls.
One of the people living in the shack told officers she stayed there with a man who watches the dogs for the owner during the day, according to police. The owner then takes them in the evening and lets them run loose.
The witness who saw the attack and called 911 told officers the dog’s owner “would hold the dogs and wait for someone to go by and would release them” in order to attack people in the area of Freeman Drive and Nowhere Road, police said.
SAME DOGS ATTACKED LAST YEAR... WAS ANYTHING DONE?
A similar attack involving the man’s dogs occurred in August 2012, according to police.
Athens-Clarke County Animal Control officers took custody of all three dogs, none of which had rabies tags.
Police continued to investigate the incident on Monday.
Last month in California, a 63-year-old was mauled to death by pit bulls during a jogging excursion.
New Hampshire resident Adam Horr received national acclaim when he managed to pull two pit bulls off a 12-year-old girl while in Maine after a video of his heroics went viral.
A Bryan County, Ga., toddler died in March after she was mauled by her family’s seven pit bulls.
A 22-year-old Athens woman fended off a pit bull that was attacking her cat in February.
(Online Athens - June 10, 2013)
