Pit bulls attack 3 before being shot

CALIFORNIA -- Three rampaging pit bulls attacked three Bay Terraces residents and sent them scrambling for safety Tuesday morning before a San Diego police officer shot the dogs.

The dogs all died after the barrage of gunfire on Petal Drive, near Dillard Street, about 8:30 a.m.

A 78-year-old retired Navy chief was bitten first, when he went outside to get his newspaper. The animals then charged a woman and bit her ankle before she could scale a neighbor’s 4-foot fence.

Then the dogs turned on 19-year-old Michael Ward, who stepped out of his Petal Drive house to find out why a woman was yelling.

“She was trying to get away from three large pit bulls,” Ward said. “Then they came chasing after me. One bit my thigh and one bit the side of my ribs.

“I was like, I’ve got to get out of here. They went pretty fast, ran after me, jumped on me. I closed the door behind me real fast.”

A police officer arrived while the dogs were near Ward’s house, and shot all three animals. Two died in the street another was euthanized at a veterinary clinic because of its severe wounds, said county Department of Animal Services Lt. Kalani Hudson.

Hudson said the dogs had no ID tags or microchips, and the owner had not come forward. Residents said they’d never seen the dogs before in the usually quiet neighborhood.

Carolyn Law was in her Dillard Street home when she heard numerous gunshots and dogs yelping in pain. She looked down onto Petal Street from her backyard.

“An officer had his gun drawn and a dog was in the gutter,” Law said. “Then I saw the dog get up. That was shocking. That dog was Cujo. The officer shot him one more time, and it was still standing, then he shot it one more time and it fell.”

Amy Hastings and her niece, on Petal Street, also heard the gunfire and went outside to find a neighbor woman in their yard.

“She said the dogs attacked her. She was bit on the back of her ankle. We brought her inside and gave her a blanket,” Hastings said. She said she was relieved to find that her own pit bull mix was not involved.

Paramedics bandaged the woman’s wounds and Ward’s. The older man was taken to a hospital with minor to moderate wounds.

His neighbor on Dillard, Rosalinda Falaminiano, said the man gets his paper from the driveway every morning, and takes walks with his wife.

“We don’t have any dogs on this end of the street, but there are pit bulls on Petal and Jouglard,” Falaminiano said. “This is a quiet neighborhood, an older neighborhood.”

Across Dillard, homeowner Giovanni Jefferson, 28, said the gunfire woke him up.

“Nine gunshots were my alarm clock,” he said. “I told my wife, ‘oh no, time to move.’”

Statistics compiled by DogsBite.org show that pit bulls were responsible for 25 of the 32 fatal dog bites in the United States last year. Bull mastiffs and German shepherds were each blamed for killing two people. Supporters of the pit bull point out it is a very common breed, and contend it is no more likely than other breeds to attack if raised with proper training, love and responsible ownership.

(U-T San Diego - April 1, 2014)