A 75-year-old woman is recovering at Hamilton Medical Center after sustaining several bites from her neighbor’s dog on Wednesday shortly after he attacked a boy nearby.
Dewayne Goswick said his mother, Dalton resident Bobbie Goswick, was the victim of a dog that had gotten loose when she was walking in her neighborhood on Conway Street in Dalton where she had dumped some food scraps.
“She’s doing pretty good, she’s eating something right now finally,” he said late Thursday. “They had to do surgery last night on her leg. You could see the bone. She’s got bites on her face, her ear, her neck, both arms, her stomach and her left leg — it looked like hamburger meat right above the ankle.”
No one was charged in the incidents, but the Whitfield County Animal Control Department cited the dog’s owner, Eduardo Fraire-Estrada, for failing to have the dog vaccinated against rabies. The dog was signed over to animal control and will be kept under observation for several days to determine if it has the disease, officials said.
Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office Maj. John Gibson said officers responded initially because the dog had attacked an unidentified juvenile. Neighbors said he was about 12 years old. Gibson said the boy was playing basketball when the loose dog attacked him. His injuries weren’t as severe as Goswick’s, witnesses said.
According to an incident report, an officer was on the scene when Goswick was attacked nearby, and witnesses heard her screaming. Sara Creed said she lives across the street from where Goswick was attacked and saw the dog tearing into her.
“The landlord from my house was beating the dog off Ms. Bobbie,” she said. “It was a crazy night.”
Creed said she didn’t know the dog’s owner, but he was “devastated” after the attack. A message left at a phone number listed for him wasn’t immediately returned.
“This was a lab chow mix,” Creed said. “They had never had an occurrence with him at all. I don’t know why he attacked the young boy... The owner was trying to restrain the dog after it got out.”
Terri Manis, Goswick’s granddaughter, said her grandmother and the dog’s owners are friends and have known each other for several years.
“The family has no hard feelings whatsoever toward the owners of the dog,” she said. “It wasn’t their fault at all.”
She said Fraire-Estrada, whom the incident report lists as 21 years old, was in tears over what happened. Manis said his mother came to visit Goswick in the hospital.
“It was just a crazy dog,” Manis said. “He literally went mad or something. It was just an accident.”
Animal shelter director Don Allen Garret said he didn’t work the case and did not know specifics, but he said the office’s policy is to allow a dangerous dog officer to decide what happens to a dog that attacks someone. Manis said the owner had already signed papers to put the dog down.
Local News
September 21, 2012
Two recovering from dog attacks
- Local News
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‘I’ve got to protect myself somehow’
A small house on Gay Street was the scene where Frank Bozzie ran over Horace Morgan with a pickup truck on June 10, according to Sheriff Scott Chitwood. (File photo by Misty Watson/The Daily Citizen)
A man police say was murdered when his attacker ran over him in his yard with a pickup truck told a 911 operator the offender broke in his house and began threatening him.
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