Cindy van Wyk, 22, had been visiting her friend, Helen Stieger, who lives in the neighbour’s granny cottage next door in Cluver Crescent.
As she was leaving the granny cottage after her visit, she said the dog attacked and bit her several times.
Van Wyk, a first-year law student at Unisa, said she had taken a break from studying and decided to have coffee with Stieger, whose nephew had locked up his pit bull inside the main house, where he lived.
She said she decided to leave when she heard her mother’s car entering their driveway. But when she opened Stieger’s front door, the dog lunged forward and bit her on her leg.
“It was a terrifying moment, it happened so fast,” she said. “The dog was just snapping at me. I could not even shut the door. I was just screaming.”
Van Wyk said Stieger managed to wrestle the dog off her and told her to run into a room and lock the door. However, she tripped and fell. The dog lunged and bit her again, she said.
Stieger said she fell over the couch in the tussle with the dog, but managed to hold its paws while Van Wyk ran away.
Van Wyk’s mother, Lettie Botha, said she heard screams coming from her neighbour’s house when she arrived home.
“I did not realise it was my own daughter. I ran to the fence and peered over,” she said. “It was the worst sight any mother could see. My daughter staggered out the house drenched in blood.”
Van Wyk said she managed to say, “Mom, I was bitten by the dog”, before finding the courage to run out of the garden. Botha said she ran to the neighbour’s front garden and by that time her daughter had collapsed on the pavement.
“I was petrified… She could not walk, so I yelled to a neighbour to call for an ambulance. She had lost a lot of blood in that short time. She was in agony. The pit bull was still ramming at the gate trying to get out of the yard.”
Van Wyk was bitten on the left elbow, right arm, crotch and both of her legs. She also has bruises on her stomach, fingertips and torso. The student is unable to walk because of swelling of her feet and has been using a wheelchair.
“I do not know how she ran with all those gaping wounds under her foot and on her leg,” said Botha.
She said she had to raise her fencing because the pit bull had once almost bitten off the paw of her boxer, Boris.
When Van Wyk arrived to visit Stieger, both women said they could see the dog through the glass sliding door at the front of the house. It is unclear how the dog got out.
Stieger said she was being blamed for the attack, but that her daughter, Carmen, had urged the owner not to get the dog in the first place.
“The dog (once) attacked Carmen, but grabbed her school bag and ripped a piece off it,” she said.
“When I come home with a packet or bag, the dog goes crazy. This is not a playful, tame dog.”
Stieger said she had heard that the owner was now fencing a portion of his garden so the dog could be confined to a specific area.
“We live in fear here on a daily basis. We must first look where the dog is before entering my own yard,” she said.
The owner of the pit bull, Warren Richards, said he had adequate signage on his fence and on the house wall warning people not to enter the garden, and if they did so it was at their own risk. He said he was not liable for what happened.
Richards has since apologised to Van Wyk.
An incident report has been opened at Brighton Beach police station.
(Independent Online - Nov 4, 2013)
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