Bianca Rodriguez, the little girl’s mother, said her daughter required more than 400 stitches to close wounds on her arms and legs and endured hours of surgery at Baystate Medical Center following the May 23 attack
“It looked like she was attacked by a shark,” Rodriguez said.
Baystate surgeons have told the family that Ymanni suffered permanent damage to her right arm and will require additional surgeries and skin grafts in the years ahead.
Rodriguez, who lives on Chester Street, said she contacted The Republican because she was fearful the dog in question could attack again and she wanted people to beware of it.
“That pit bull came up out of nowhere and attacked her,” said Rodriguez. “I don’t want that to happen to another child. I don’t want anybody to ever have to go through what we have been through.”
Pam Peebles, executive director of the Thomas J. O’Connor Animal Control and Adoption Center, said the dog, a large black pit bull named Bobo, was surrendered after the attack and euthanized immediately after the mandatory ten-day holding period to ensure that it did not have rabies.
The dog was euthanized because it exhibited a high level of aggression, Peebles said. “It was pretty apparent that we would not be entertaining any idea of him returning to the community,” she said.
Bobo, Peebles said, was neglected and spent countless hours on a backyard chain. A second dog, an offspring of the first that was similarly treated, was also euthanized.
“The way they spent their lives led to a high-level of aggression,” Peebles said.
Both Peebles and Police Sgt. John M. Delaney said the attack occurred in the area of 221 Hancock St., where the two dogs lived.
Peebles said she believes the dog was chained and that Ymanni, playing with friends, was attacked when she wandered within the scope of that chain.
Police reports, however, indicate that the dog was not chained, according to Delaney. Rodriguez said she too believes the dog was not chained.
Delaney said that police officers, summoned to Hancock and Chester streets for a report of girl bitten by a dog, were flagged down by Ymanni herself as they approached the scene.
Delaney said the owner of the dogs placed them in the basement after the attack and that an animal control officer then took them to T.J. O’Connor. He declined to identify the owner and said no charges have been filed.
Rodriguez said she does not understand why people keep pit bulls.
“I just think it’s important that people learn about these dogs,” she said. “We hear (about pit bull attacks on people) over and over again and people keep buying them.”
Peebles stressed, however, that the issue is not about pit bulls per se. “This is about a lack of management of a large athletic dog,” Peebles said.
Pit bull attacks on people in Springfield are prominent because there is a high proportion of them in the city. But other dogs, especially those that are mistreated or mishandled, can attack as well.
Last week, for example, a woman from Chicopee suffered a bad bite from her 5-year-old Golden Retriever, newly-acquired from an acquaintance who could no longer care for it.
“She reached down for a paper that had fallen and the dog reacted violently,” Peebles said, adding that the bite, while nothing on the scale that Ymanni suffered, required an emergency room visit.
[Gotta love the vicious Golden Retriever stories. I like how she begrudgingly admits that the bite was nowhere near as horrible as the pit bull attack on this little girl, but makes sure to mention that the Golden Retriever bite 'required an emergency room visit'. Really?! If it's after normal business hours, most people go to the emergency room.
All dogs can - and do - bite. However, I don't recall ever hearing stories of Golden Retrievers on the attack, still attacking their victim despite being pepper sprayed, tasered, shot, clubbed, stabbed, stabbed with pitchforks, beaten with shovels, sticks and brooms, bricks, curtain rods, baseball bats, etc. --- all of which have been used to try to stop pit bull attacks.]
“There are a lot of great dogs of every breed and there are a lot of threatening dogs of every breed,” Peebles said, adding that the Golden Retriever is now in the midst of its ten-day quarantine at T.J. O’Connor.
Meanwhile, Ymanni, who came home from the hospital on June 2, has been enjoying some relative normalcy back at school. “She really wanted to see her friends,” Rodriguez said.
Such attacks have made the news a number of times this year in Western Massachusetts. Last Monday a 9-year-old Pittsfield boy suffered wounds to his head, arms and face and part of his scalp was torn off in an attack by his neighbor’s pit bull dogs.
Last February, two pit bulls attacked their owner on Porter Lake Drive in Springfield after she intervened when the dogs began fighting over a thrown stick. Both dogs were euthanized following the attack.
The month before, a pit bull attacked its owner, a 2-year-old girl and a Westfield police officer at a Maple Street residence.
“Dog went nuts," said Westfield Police Capt. Michael McCabe.
(MassLive.com - June 15, 2012)
