Four legged friends (and enemies): Texas: "I was fighting for my life" says elderly woman whose arm was ripped off by Alphonso McCloud and his wife Stanyelle Miles-McCloud's Pit Bull

Saturday, January 20, 2018

Texas: "I was fighting for my life" says elderly woman whose arm was ripped off by Alphonso McCloud and his wife Stanyelle Miles-McCloud's Pit Bull

TEXAS -- “Please help me. Oh God, please help me,” Doris Mixon Smith told a jury here Friday, recalling what she said as a 70-pound pit bull charged at her, “mouth wide open.”

As she testified, she lifted her left arm to show the panel what remains of the limb, severed by the bites and tears from the dog, named “Bully.”

The dog was owned by former neighbors Alphonso McCloud and his wife Stanyelle Miles-McCloud, who are accused of serious bodily injury in the attack.

Mixon Smith, who was 72, was working on a flower bed in front of her far West Side home in the 8900 block of Mansfield on March 6 when she said the dog somehow got out of his yard and attacked her.

“He came at me as I was bent over with a pot in my hand,” she said. “I was just fighting for my life, kicking and screaming, trying to get to my door to get my gun. He never turned me loose.”

Mixon Smith, now 73, testified the day after jurors heard the woman’s screams, a child crying and the caller cursing in a chilling 911 call and watched the grisly attack, which lasted at least five minutes and was captured on video from a doorbell camera.

The recording showed the dog’s jaw locked onto her arm, violently shaking and breaking it, while a crying child yells, “Let go! Let go,” as he hit the animal with a stick. The video ends shortly after a San Antonio police officer shot and killed the animal.

A retiree who has lived in the Tara subdivision for 33 years, Mixon Smith said she is very particular and has a weekly routine that involves gardening twice a week, volunteering and helping friends twice a week, and “church, football and golf” on Sundays.

She is known for letting neighbors know when their yards need attention and said she routinely mowed the lawns of her neighbors when she did hers — including her next-door neighbors, McCloud and Miles-McCloud.

Mixon Smith testified that whenever she mowed her lawn or used her weed eater, the dog would bark, jump up on the fence and run up and down the fence line.

She also said she alerted the owners whenever the dog would get out of the yard and recalled that McCloud put a lock on the gate.

The day of the attack, she said the lock was missing and the dog nearly got out of the gate while she was mowing her yard. She used her lawnmower to hold the gate closed while she alerted a female relative in the home.

“I said, ‘Sweetie, you need to come get the dogs inside or put the lock on the gate,’ and she told me she was afraid of the dogs but would tell somebody,” Mixon Smith said.

She then took her lawnmower to the garage since the dog was no longer at the gate.

About three hours later, she started planting in her garden.

When the dog charged over the corner of her flower bed, “he grabbed this arm,” she said as she raised her left limb and showed what remained. “I realized seven days later he tore off my face.”

Prosecutor Daryl Harris showed Mixon Smith a photograph of her porch taken the afternoon of the attack.

“Oh, my God. I haven’t seen this,” she said. “I was trying to get to my door to get my gun.”

Mixon Smith said she passed out, but the child in the video, later identified as the 10-year-old son of the McCloud and Miles-McCloud, was her “hero.”

“He came over with a stick,” she said. “God covered me because that little boy kept saying, ‘Let the lady go.’”

An Animal Care Services investigator, Jennifer Fried, testified that after the attack, two more dogs were seized from the McClouds after Mixon Smith reported that they had another pit bull in the backyard, in addition to a Rhodesian ridgeback. The ridgeback ended up being euthanized because it was deemed dangerous.

US ARMY VETERANS RESPONSIBLE FOR ELDERLY WOMAN'S FACE AND ARM "BEING RIPPED OFF" BY THEIR PIT BULL
The couple, both Army veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, met while in combat. They each testified Friday under questioning by their own attorneys.

McCloud, 28, testified that Mixon Smith was “kind.”

“She was like a mother away from home,” he said. “I was raised by my grandmother — it was the same feeling. She was always on me about the lawn, my trash, things of that nature.”

He said she also was always in his yard but that he neither granted permission nor prevented her from mowing it if she wanted.

OWNER CLAIMS SURPRISE THAT HIS PIT BULL IS KILLER
When asked by his attorney, Kenneth Baker, whether he ever saw Bully get out of the yard or have problems with neighbors or if he was a dangerous dog, McCloud replied, “No, sir, he’s a very loving dog.”

McCloud said he put a lock on the outside latch of the gate but admitted he “got tired” of removing it every time someone came to mow his backyard.

“I took the lock off and put a metal rod in,” he said. “I bent it and twisted it so (Bully) couldn’t get out.

PREVIOUS ATTACKS BY "LOVING" PIT BULL
McCloud disputed reports that Bully bit a “cable guy” at their home and one of their nieces before the attack on Mixon Smith.

Fried, the ACS investigator, testified earlier that Bully was quarantined for two weeks after the report that he bit the cable guy in October 2016.

Miles-McCloud, when questioned about Bully by her attorney, Edith Brown, testified she was the one who found the dog on Facebook and had spent time with him and saw how he was with the children at his previous home. Had he been dangerous, she said, she would not have taken him.

ON THE STAND, STANYELLE MILES-MCCLOUD CALLS HER NIECE A LIAR
“We met with Bully and had no concerns,” Miles-McCloud said, who also disputed the biting reports, stating that their niece “lies.”

She also ~~said~~ MINIMIZED THE ATTACK, CLAIMING the cable guy suffered a scratch, not a bite.

After the incident with the cable guy, Miles-McCloud said, she and her husband discussed whether they should keep the pit bull, but she said they ultimately decided to keep Bully because she never heard or saw anything that indicated the dog was aggressive.

She told the jury she didn’t know Mixon Smith as well as her husband, and had brief interactions, but that her children told her they didn’t like the way Mixon Smith treated them or Bully.

When asked by Brown how their son shown in the video was coping, she said he was “torn.”

“He’s torn between the loss of his dog and what happened to Ms. Mixon Smith,” Miles-McCloud said.

If he beat the dog off this woman, I don't think he cares about this mauler one bit.

McCloud and Miles-McCloud are being tried together and have asked for probation. If convicted, each faces two to 20 years and a $10,000 fine for dangerous dog attack-serious bodily injury, a third-degree felony.

The state rested its case and the defense is presenting evidence. Testimony is expected to resume Monday in the 187th state District Court, presided by Judge Joey Contreras.