Rottweiler attacks and kills Tennessee man within hours of him adopting it from the local shelter

Read more about behavioral testing here: How behavior testing fails adopters, dogs, volunteers & shelter staff and here: The Pit Bull Hoax: The ATTS

TENNESSEE -- A Tennessee animal lover was mauled to death by a Rottweiler he had adopted only hours earlier on Thursday, police said.

The wife of Anthony Riggs, 57, found him dead when she came back to their Jackson-area home from work around 3:30 p.m., officials in the Madison County Sheriff’s Office told The Jackson Sun.

Riggs had taken the dog home from Jackson-Madison County Rabies Control, a county animal control facility, that very morning, according to the sheriff’s office. Deputies shot the 5-year-old male dead at the scene when he charged toward a group of onlookers who had gathered outside the house.

A Jackson city employee had found the stray dog five days earlier, and he hadn’t bitten any handlers while he was in custody, Kim Tedford, director of the county's Regional Health Department, told the local newspaper.

Officials “by no means would adopt an animal out that showed any signs of aggression,” Tedford said.

Investigators in the sheriff’s office are now probing Riggs’ death, Madison County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Tom Mapes told WBBJ-TV.

“It's just one of those tragic stories that we want to encourage people to adopt pets, but then you have a situation like this that occurs, and it’s just mind-boggling. It's disheartening,” Mapes said.

Other local residents are questioning why the dog had been up for adoption while mourning Riggs’ death. “A docile dog does not turn in three hours and kill somebody,” his ex-wife, Adrienne Riggs, told the Sun. She recalled owning several dogs with him during their marriage.

“He never hesitated to be with dogs. Sometimes I thought he related to dogs better than to people,” she said. “Tony was a good man and a loving man and a good person with animals and he didn’t deserve to die the way that he did.”

(NY Daily News - Nov 17, 2015)