"The dog... it jumped up and when it jumped up, we moved back,” said Andrea, “Then we started walking forward and it jumped over the gate. My cousin and my brother, they tried to jump over the other gate and I fell and it grabbed my foot."
Andrea says the dog still had her bloodied foot locked in its jaws when its owner came out of the house and called it off, but any attempt to assist the injured teen ended there.
"She just went in the house and she slammed the door."
"She didn't look to see how you were doing?"
"No. She didn't ask if I was fine or nothing."
When Andrea's mother learned of the attack, she walked a few blocks until she spotted the dog and was met with scorn by its owner.
"’So what?' She didn't care. She wasn't sympathetic," said Tierra Nelson who claims Anne Arundel County Police added insult to injury when they arrived at the home.
The only person they threatened to arrest was her for loitering or trespassing.
"When the police came, I made them aware of the situation. They didn't care. They told me they were not going to write a police report, because she wasn't bitten in the face."
Police say the initial call they responded to was for a disturbance, and while the dog remains in the owner's care for now, this case is far from over.
"I can tell you that Animal Control spoke with family members of this victim yesterday,” said Justin Mulcahy of the Anne Arundel County Police Department, “They've certainly opened an investigation, which in ongoing at this juncture. They have plans to make contact with the dog owner and at that point the investigation will progress."
We tried to contact the owner as well, but no one answered our repeated knocks at the door.
Minutes later, we did notice a person surface from the home, as did a pit bull matching the description of the one that Andrea says attacked her less than 48 hours before her birthday.
"She had to get a tetanus shot. She had to get some type of skin culture. She's on antibiotics,” said the teen’s mother, “Somebody will be calling me shortly to let me know if she's going to have to go (through) a series of rabies shots."
At this point, no one has asked the dog's owner to provide any proof that it's been vaccinated to spare Andrea from those shots.
(abc2news.com - July 24, 2013)
