- April 18, 2024
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Two young children and their mother were mauled Wednesday by a large dog that got out of its cage at Second Chance Rescue in Bunnell, where the mother is a volunteer, according to a Flagler County Sheriff’s Office report.
A sheriff’s deputy who saw the three in the emergency room after the attack wrote in his case report that the boy’s “face had already started to swell and discolor from the bruising and his eye socket appeared to be damaged,” and that the little girl was “lying in another hospital bed with blood soaking through her bandages" and "crying in pain.”
Their mother, 27-year-old Palm Coast resident Amanda Andrews, had blood leaking down her face and neck and “appeared to be in shock,” the deputy wrote.
She told deputies that she’d left that her 3-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter in the family’s Toyota Sienna with the windows rolled down as she went to do some shelter work.
But then the dog, which she described to deputies as a black and white pit bull, broke out of its cage and barreled toward the van, according the deputy’s report.
It jumped into a passenger-side window, and “went straight to her son who was sitting in the middle row of the van and latched on to his head, dragging him to the floor of the vehicle,” according to the report.
Andrews tried to pull the dog off her son as it repeatedly bit his face, and “she had to grab the dog’s mouth and pry it open using her hands to free her son, at which time the dog turned on her biting her in the face and neck,” according to the report.
She finally got ahold of the animal and dragged it back to its cage, where she secured it and ran for help.
But the dog got out again and ran back to the van, jumping through the open passenger door and attacking Andrews' daughter, “grabbing her by her shoulder and whipping her to the floor,” according to the report.
Andrews grabbed the dog again and put it in another holding area, then got in the van and called for help.
Paramedics took the family to Florida Hospital Flagler, and a Flagler County Animal Control employee took the dog for quarantine at the Flagler Humane Society.
He told the deputy investigating the case that animal control would also conduct an investigation.
Andrews and the children were in stable condition at the hospital by the time the deputy wrote up his report, but their injuries were extensive.
“The paramedics stated that Amanda had lacerations and puncture wounds on her left temple, behind her left ear and on her arms,” the deputy wrote.
Paramedics told the deputy that the boy “was in the worst condition, with a right eye puncture, a tear in the upper and lower parts of his mouth along with a large puncture under his chin,” and that he “also had puncture marks and deep lacerations to his right upper eye, along with missing a tooth in his mouth and multiple lacerations to his face and upper body,” according to the report.
The little girl “had puncture wounds to the front and rear of her right shoulder and laceration on the same side,” the deputy wrote.
The deputy inspected the vehicle, and wrote that he “observed large scratches and muddy dog prints on the passenger side door and muddy dog prints on the passenger side seat along with dog prints leading to the back of the vehicle” and “blood splatter on the seats and ceiling along with large pools of blood on the floor and pieces of clothing in the vehicle.”
In a statement posted on its Facebook page, Second Chance Rescue berated the press for reporting that the dog was a pit bull — information that comes from the Sheriff’s Office report — saying that “all the media cares about is a juicy story that exploits people.”
The Second Chance Rescue statement says the dog is not a pit bull, and that dogs are too often misidentified as pits in stories about dog attacks.
Flagler Humane Society Director Wade-Carotenuto also said the dog appears to be a mixed breed. “We don’t know what the dog is,” she said. “It’s very mixed. He could have pit bull in him, he could have lab, boxer. There’s not a purebred in the lineage any time in recent history.”
Second Chance Rescue’s statement said the dog was dropped off by a homeless man, and that it initially seemed friendly.
“A week ago, a homeless man showed up out our gate with a LAB BOXER mix and he was losing his car that he has lived in with the dog,” the statement reads. “The dog was friendly and vetted so we agreed to take it. Last night, one of our volunteers and her children were there, and she was letting him out to potty like she has all week and he bit them. He did NOT break out of his cage like the news said.”
The statement said the attack was “not the dog’s fault,” and that “dogs do not attack for no reason,” and lays blame on the Flagler Humane Society because the dog’s homeless owner said he’d wanted to leave the dog there but couldn’t afford a $150 drop-off fee.
“This is not to say that it is not a big deal, because we value our volunteers so much and will do whatever we can for them. The fact is though, if these Humane Societies were not charging a drop off fee, we would not be known as the dumping ground for unwanted animals,” the statement reads. “People use to not want to drop their pets off there because they did not want them to die and now they don’t because they can't afford it.”
Wade-Carotenuto, the Flagler Humane Society director, said the Flagler Humane Society asks for a $150 fee when people surrender large dogs, but that “more often than not, they don’t have it, so we ask them, ‘Is there anything you could do to donate for their care?’” Some, she said, put in a few hours of volunteer time.
Wade-Carotenuto said the dog who committed the attack Wednesday will be euthanized. There’s no owner fighting for him, and no one likely to want to adopt him after such an attack.
“Unfortunately, there’s not much choice,” she said.
