Pennsylvania: Lisa Green, 32, mauled to death by her beloved Pit Bull / Boxer mix

PENNSYLVANIA -- An Upper Macungie Township woman was mauled to death by her dog Thursday afternoon on the rear deck of her home, despite the attempts of neighbors to draw the dog away, police and witnesses said.

An off-duty police officer eventually ended the attack by shooting the dog once in its leg, but it was too late.

Lisa Green, 32, of the 900 block of Spring White Drive in Breinigsville, bled badly on the scene, neighbors said. She was taken by Cetronia Ambulance to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest, where she was pronounced dead.

  

 

Loretta Ottinger, a next-door neighbor, said she heard Green calling, "Someone help me!"

She went to a window and saw the dog, a 3-1/2-year-old pit bull-boxer mix, biting at Green's legs, neck and head.

Ottinger said she tried to stop the dog's attack, first by hitting it with a hambone and leaving the ham, and then by hitting the dog with a stick. But the mauling continued.

 "I had a ham in my refrigerator, I thought, bribe him with the ham so that I can get her," Ottinger explained. 

"So I'm dialing 9-1-1, I went up to the deck and I hit him with the ham, thinking [he'd quit attacking her] and he'd go after [the ham]," Ottinger said. 

"I thought if Lisa could get free and roll over, the dog would be off her jugular. But he ignored the ham -- he was so engrossed in attacking her. He was just picking her up and throwing her down."

Ottinger yelled to Green to roll over, to protect her head and neck from the dog.

By that point, however, Green was unresponsive. "Her head just leaned to the side. She didn't respond," Ottinger said.

Ottinger then grabbed a four-foot-long piece of wood from another neighbor and rammed it through the deck slats at the dog, who fought back.

"I tried to stab the dog's eyes with the board. I hit his eye once, but he grabbed the board in his mouth and he broke it," she said. "Then I didn't know what to do. He started mauling her some more."

Meanwhile, neighbor Vidya Chellapilla called off-duty Slatington police Chief David Rachman, who also lives nearby. Rachman rushed over and fired his handgun twice, wounding the dog once.

The Morning Call provided more details from the off-duty police officer that shot the dog, Slatington police chief David Rachman.

Neighbors stopped him while he was in his truck, he said, yelling that a dog had killed a woman. He went behind the home and saw Green lying motionless on the second-floor deck with her head, neck and face covered in blood. He then retrieved his .380-caliber handgun from his truck.

The chief said the dog kept attacking her neck, so he shot it.

"He grabbed her by the neck again and shook her like a rag doll. She was flopping around." - Slatington police chief David Rachman.

Just before firing on the dog, he said the dog actually "started to lick the blood off her face" and head. "Then he nuzzled his nose, flipped her head up, grabbed her by the throat and then thrashed around," Rachman said. 

That's when Rachman, standing below the victim, shot the dog in the leg.

Chellapilla said that, after being shot, the dog became calm, hovered over Green a moment and then limped to the far side of the deck, where it simply sat down looking at them.

Pennsylvania Dog Warden Orlando Aguire tranquilized the dog and took it into custody. The dog was taken to the Lehigh County Humane Society where, Aguire said, it will be put to death.

The dog also will be tested in an attempt to help determine what touched off the violence, he said.

Green had the dog, named Leon, for about 2-1/2 years, Ottinger said.

"She was really close with her dog," she said. "It was a pit bull. They're pretty strong dogs."

PREVIOUS ATTACK ON NEIGHBOR'S DOG

Rachman, however, said he rarely saw the dog, which is unusual he noted. Two years earlier, Green's dog attacked another neighbor's Siberian Husky, Rachman said.

WFMZ learned that a man's grandson was bitten in the face by the same dog several years ago.

As to why the dog turned on its owner, Rachman has no idea. "The way he attacked her, that's the way animals kill," he said. "His intention was to kill her."

Ottinger said that even after witnessing the attack and seeing Green motionless on the blood-stained back deck, she had hope she would survive.

"I just thought she was going to make it," she said. "She was too young to die."

Ottinger shook her head.

"I love dogs," she said, "but wow, I just don't know why anyone would get a pit bull."

She remembered her neighbor, whom she described as "a lovely woman, athletic, always looked impeccably neat," a good neighbor who kindly shoveled the Ottinger driveway after the last winter snow.

  

Unverified photos of a Lisa Green who lives
in Breiningsville, Pennsylvania -- where the
fatal dog attack occurred

 "She kept to herself, but we'd take walks together," Ottinger said. "We never took the dog for a walk, and I hadn't seen her take the dog for a walk in a while, since he was younger."

Green grew up in the Palmerton area and was a graduate of Lehigh University, Ottinger said. She was a manager for a Bed, Bath & Beyond store, she said.

Upper Macungie police Chief Edgardo Colon said the attack was still happening when township arrived, but ended soon after. Officers secured the secured the dog, he said.

The case remains under investigation by Upper Macungie police, the Lehigh County coroner's office and the dog warden.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 20 to 30 people are killed each year in dog attacks.

(McCall.com - April 27, 2017)