The 3-year-old dogs were untethered when they pounced on Craig Sytsma, 46, as he jogged along Thomas Road, a rural dirt road in Metamora Township around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. A neighbor mowing his lawn waved to the runner as he did a pass in the yard — then saw the man lying in a ditch, the two dogs ripping at the man’s arms, the next time he came around.
“He was jogging, doing what everybody else does out there, running and riding bikes,” Metamora Township police Officer Sean Leathers, one of the first on scene, said.
The neighbor grabbed a gun and fired it, grazing one of the beasts, in an attempt to scare the dogs off.
“He yelled at the dogs,” Lapeer County Sheriff’s Office Det. Sgt. Jason Parks told the Detroit Free Press. “They would not release.”
They eventually ran off back home. But the neighbor and another witness, a nurse who tried CPR, could not save the man, who had no identification or a cellphone.
Sytsma, a divorced father of three children, died an hour later at a local hospital.
It wasn’t until Thursday that police were able to identify the man after Sytsma’s employee showed up to the man’s office, Eltro Services in nearby Oxford Township, and realized the man’s car had been there overnight, the door to the building still unlocked.
The large Italian dogs, bred to hunt boar, are described as mastiff-type dogs known as “noble, majestic, and powerful in presence,” according to the American Kennel Club. The typically weigh around 100 pounds.
The dogs have been in Metamora, a town some 45 miles northwest of Detroit, since 2011 and known to law enforcement and animal control since a biting incident in 2012 — and a second in 2013.
The dogs are being held at the Lapeer County Animal Shelter and are expected to be euthanized.
“They’re a public threat,” Parks told the newspaper. “They’re beyond rehabilitation.”
The 45-year-old owner could face a charge like involuntary manslaughter in the deadly attack. The Lapeer County prosecutor’s office is reviewing the case, the office confirmed Friday.
The dogs’ owner made quite the impression on neighbors when he — and his menagerie of pets — moved to the neighborhood. He approached one woman, who has a young daughter, with pet hawk on his arm and one of the corsos running unleashed.
“I said, ‘Is he aggressive?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, everything I own is aggressive,’” Ashley Winter, 31, told the Free Press. “I thought, ‘What have we gotten ourselves into?’”
Locals found out fairly quickly. April Smith was walking by the home in May 2012 when one dog ran up behind her and latched onto her leg, tearing three holes in her leg and causing bleeding.
The attack stopped when the owner’s son called the animal off.
“I cannot believe this happened to someone,” Smith told the Free Press. “I’m not mad at the dogs, I’m so upset with the owners. I thought something would be done with these dogs, but nothing was done. Nothing was ever done. Those dogs are vicious. It’s not a joke.”
A man in his 70s was attacked in 2013, too, authorities confirmed.
“It’s just crazy to me,” Smith told the paper. “Animal control should have done something. It should have never gone this far. The fact this has led to a death, it’s sickening.”
(New York Daily News - July 26, 2014)
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