But after Shayna was attacked by three dogs earlier this week, she’s not sure when she’ll feel safe around canines again.
“It’s still bothering me. I’m still bothered by what happened to her because she’s scarred for life now,” said Randy, sitting with Shayna in their Carolina Church Road home on Thursday, three days after the attack.
Shayna left the house at about 5:30 p.m. on Monday to take two family friends to play basketball nearby. When they found the courts empty, Shayna took the two small children to another home where others kids were playing outside.
On her way to a relative’s house, she stopped to say hello to a neighbor outside her home on Frontier Drive, just around the corner from the Marques’ house.
“She was about to let her dogs inside her house but only one was on a leash,” the St. Pauls High School student said. “She opened the fence and her dogs got out.”
Three of the dogs began biting her, but a fourth, Shayna said, didn’t attack. She grabbed onto the dog and, with the help of their owner, tried to fight the others off.
“I felt the first bite but the rest of the bites I didn’t feel. I was just yanking my leg trying to push them down and punch their heads,” she said.
She said the neighbor’s dogs have never bothered her before but had fought with one of her two dogs the week before the attack. But on Monday, none of the family’s dogs were around to provoke such a reaction.
Randy was paralyzed by what was unfolding.
“I was the last one out of the house,” he said. “All I saw was her walking up the street and I couldn’t move. I ran out to the street but I couldn’t move from there. I was stuck.”
Shayna suffered 12 bites on her right wrist, left shoulder, left forearm and legs. Seven required stitches at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, where she stayed Monday and Tuesday nights. The ordeal has left her a little wary of even her own dogs, Ceaser and Marley. She’s still in pain but plans to return to school in the next few days.
“She’s strong,” Randy said.
The family is not comfortable with the fact that two of the dogs who bit Shayna and subsequently were declared vicious can return home soon, although they are glad the dog that did not bite her was unharmed.
In order to keep the dogs, the owner must build a secure pen to the Robeson County Health Department’s specifications and never allow the dogs out of the pen unless muzzled or on a leash. County officials did not have the name of the dogs’ owner.
Three of the dogs, including the dog that did not bite Shyana, had been vaccinated against rabies and are being kept for 10 days by the Robeson County Health Department for monitoring before being returned to their owner. A fourth dog involved in the attack that had not been vaccinated against rabies was killed and his brain submitted for rabies tests, which came back negative.
All of the dog were mixed breeds.
The attack on Shayna came eight days after a 7-year-old child was killed and his brother seriously injured when they were attacked by several dogs in Lumberton.
Under North Carolina law, the owner of a dog that bites a person is liable if the dog has already been deemed dangerous or if the dog was running loose at night. Rabies vaccinations are required for all dogs, cats and ferrets at least 4 months old, according to state law.
(The Robesonian - Feb 5, 2016)
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