12-year-old recounts terrifying pit bull attack

VIRGINIA -- A 12-year-old Portsmouth girl is recovering after a terrifying pit bull attack. Her injuries were so bad she had to have dozens of stitches to close her wounds.

It’s painful for Tatayiana Young to even speak of what happened to her.

 

“I felt like ‘why did this have to happen to me?’” said Young. “I was crying because I thought I was going to die.”

The 12-year-old says she was sitting on a porch with a friend on Summit Avenue Thursday night. Young said a pit bull got out of her friend’s house and lunged toward her.

“After that the dog ran down to me quickly,” said Young. “It dragged me by my hair, then he bit my side, because I stood up. I fell to the ground and then he started just chewing on my ear.”

“The neighbor’s the one that got the dog off of her,” explained Tatayiana Young’s mother, Tinya Prayer. “The neighbor brought her to me in his arms and said, ‘She needs medics.’”

Young was taken to the hospital, where she had to have 20 stitches in her ear, and 12 stitches on the left side of her back. Prayer says the dog ripped part of her daughter’s ear.

“My thing was, ‘Is my baby going to make it?’ I just saw her ear hanging and I saw blood dripping from everywhere,” said Prayer.

Young will have to have plastic surgery on her ear, and many more doctor visits. The scars on the outside will heal in time, and now Young’s mother is focused on healing the wounds you can’t see.

“I let her know that all dogs are not like this,” said Prayer.

The owner of the dog relinquished the dog to animal control on Friday. The dog is currently in quarantine.

(WAVY - April 11, 2014)