California Injury Blog
This is one of those stories that you cannot even imagine happening to you or someone you know. Two LAPD officers are being honored for saving the life of a man who was being mauled by a pit-bull, according to a news article in the Los Angeles Daily News.
The horrific details of this attack are described in the Daily News article. Detective Mark Hahn and Andy Moody heard the 53-year-old man’s cries for help when they were driving near 97th and Hoover streets. The man was reportedly hiding under a parked car to escape the wrath of a pit-bull.
As the detectives ran to help him, the dog got under the car and bit the man’s leg, then actually dragged him from under the car and mauled him. By this time, people were gathering around to help the poor guy and stop the dog from killing him. Someone threw water on the dog. One of the detectives grabbed a shovel and hit the pit-bull on its head but even that didn’t stop the dog. It continued to maul the man, tearing down the flesh on his face and head!
The ordeal came to an end when Hahn threw himself between the man and the raging put bull and then pulled out his gun and shot at the dog, hurting it in the chest. The man, who it turned out, was “pet-sitting” the dog for a friend, suffered severe bites and injuries to his head, face, arms and legs. The pit-bull reportedly attacked him as he was leaving for work, the news article said.
First of all, the two officers must be commended for their heroism in this incident. If not for them, we would be reading the obituary of the man who probably would’ve been dragged down the street and mauled to death by what seemed to be a very persistent dog.
The behavior of the animal is disturbing, but hardly surprising. How many pit-bull, Rottweiler and vicious dog stories have we read, seen or heard about just this year? At least a dozen or more come to mind right away. Should we still continue to believe that these breeds of dogs are safe and not a threat to their owners and to the community?
In this particular case, there will be other questions to ask too. Did the owner of the dog tell his friend (the victim in this case) that his dog was prone to attacking people or other dogs? Had this particular pit-bull attacked other people or smaller dogs before?
We hope the victim and his family hire an experienced personal injury attorney who specializes in dog bite cases so he can receive insurance money and/or damages he is entitled to. He’ll definitely need the money for plastic surgery to fix the bite wounds and to treat his severe injuries.