"I really don't want to see the dogs put down, but in my heart I just think about them doing this to someone else -- a little kid could have been out there instead of me," she said from inside Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze.
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| Police on Saturday night taking away one of the pit bulls involved in the attack of a 65-year-old woman in Dongna Hills. Staten Island Advance/ Ryan Lavis |
"I feel terrible about it. I've loved dogs all my life."
Besides some scaring, doctors expect her to make a full recovery.
They'll perform skin grafts next week, with rehab sessions eventually to follow -- a result from one of the pit bulls tearing a large piece of skin from the underside of her right forearm, exposing the bone.
"I don't care about a few scars. I'm 65 years old, all I care about is being alive," said a high-spirited Ms. Fundaro.
Police confirmed that Ms. Fundaro suffered lacerations to her arms due to the pit bull attacking her, but said that no arrests were made or summonses issued to the dog's owners.
"It looks like the dog ran loose from the backyard," said an NYPD spokeswoman.
The spokeswoman couldn't confirm the whereabouts of the dogs Sunday evening, but witnesses said that police took away at least one of the pit bulls Saturday night.
Sitting upright with her best friend at her side, Ms. Fundaro recounted the gruesome details that occurred Saturday afternoon on Dumont Avenue -- a quiet residential street where she had almost been mauled to death.
"It was like a ghost town. No one was around and then the next thing I knew, I see this pit bull charging at me and I knew he didn't have any good intentions," she said.
Rather than run away, she froze in place and stood her ground as the one dog tore a thick chunk of flesh from her body. "I'm glad I didn't fall to the ground because he would have mauled the hell out of me. I just tried to stay still."
[The standard instruction given to people - including children - is to not run, but to stand "like a tree". This obviously does not work with pit bulls.]
A second, smaller pit bull then came over and started biting her legs. The two dogs became distracted, she said, when they started sniffing at a piece of her torn-off flesh in the middle of the street.
Bleeding and badly injured, she managed to run back to the house where her friends and relatives had been enjoying a barbecue celebrating the end of summer.
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| Michael Colini, pointing to blood stains in his friend's driveway in Dongan Hills, where a family friend was attacked by two pit bulls Saturday afternoon. (Ryan Lavis) |
"I just high-tailed it to the back yard, bad knees and all. I can't believe I got away," she said, emphasizing that "he let me go, because it was all him. He was in control."
Earlier Sunday afternoon, no one answered the door at the home where the pit bulls had been living. A "Beware of Dog" sign was still posted on the front lawn.
Ms. Fundaro said she believes the dogs were sitting on the front porch, unleashed, at the time of the incident.
It's unclear what will ultimately happen to the pit bulls.
(SILive.com - August 26, 2013)
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