“I barely closed my eyes,” he said. “It was horrible.”
Benzenadi got home from work around 5 p.m. Wednesday and saw a dog playing with something in the yard adjacent to his in Pointe-aux-Trembles.
“As I approached I noticed it was playing with a large object,” Benzenadi told the Montreal Gazette Thursday. “Then I saw hair. I approached further and that’s when I saw the body, the body of a woman, inert, motionless. My reflex was to call out ‘Christiane!'”
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| They believe the pit bull entered through this hole. |
La Presse reported Thursday that the victim was Christiane Vadnais.
Benzenadi, a French teacher, said his neighbour was unresponsive to his calls so he ran inside his home and called the police.
Police say the 55-year-old Montreal woman died after apparently being attacked by a neighbour’s dog. They found the woman’s body in the backyard of her home on Edgar Prairie St. that afternoon.
They believe the pit bull got into the victim’s yard through a hole in the fence at the edge of her property.
Police said the dog was standing by the body and acting aggressively. It was shot and killed by officers to allow paramedics to approach the woman, who was pronounced dead at the scene.
Benzenadi said the dog attacked one of the police officers before they shot it. He also said that he had heard a dog growling at night for the past week.
“It was horrible, what I saw, very ugly. I’ve never seen anything like that,” Benzenadi said. “I like to think I have a shell, I’m a father but I’m feeling fragile now.”
Although the victim had several bite marks on her body, an autopsy will be conducted to determine a cause of death.
“There were lots of injuries all over her body,” said Constable Benoit Boisselle of the Montreal police. “I’m not going to get into specifics but you can imagine what would happen with an aggressive dog.”
If the autopsy reveals the woman died because of the attack, Crown prosecutors could press criminal negligence charges against the dog’s owner, according to police.
Boisselle said police have met with the owner and that he’s been very cooperative.
SPCA Montreal spokesman Anita Kapuscinska said her organization is saddened by the tragic death. While the SPCA is concerned about dangerous dogs in the community, few details are available about the latest attack, Kapuscinska said.
“Has the dog shown aggressive behaviour before and nothing had been done about it? Was the dog in an unfenced back yard? Why was it alone? Where was the owner? Was the dog seen by a vet? What was the dog’s fertility status?
“Many questions are unanswered and we definitely will be following up on the circumstances that led to the attack,” she said.
For Benzenadi, it was important to make sure his children were spared having to see their neighbour’s mangled body.
“We took the children aside, they didn’t know anything,” he said. “Well they know that a dog attacked our neighbour but we didn’t say she was dead. This morning we told them the truth.
“I love dogs, I’ve always had dogs as a child, but when I saw that image, it was terrifying. … I’m sorry but that kind of dog, you need to do something to regulate it, at least that’s my opinion.”
(Montreal Gazette - June 9, 2016)
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