Posted on 01/18/2010 2:00:15 PM PST by valkyry1
Police are investigating the death of a 56-year-old Far South Side man whose daughter came home Sunday night to find him covered in blood and apparently killed by the pit bulls she was raising, police sources said.
Johnny Wilson was found in the living room of his home in the 10200 block of South Aberdeen Street with numerous bite marks on his body, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. Other sources said he suffered massive head, chest and upper body trauma.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagobreakingnews.com ...
A longtime neighbor at whose house the daughter and her family stayed Sunday night said he thought the attack was out of character for the dogs, which he has found to be friendly in the past. Another neighbor also said Wilson never appeared to have had any trouble with the dogs.
ping
The old man obviously provoked them. /sarcasm
I have been told, repeatedly, that attacks like this are rare.
If the man was killed by a dog, how did his daughter raise him? Hmmmm
//attacks like this are rare//
Yeah just like lightning strikes, but if you go to where the lightning is....
Five hundred people are killed by lightning each year. About 30 are killed by dogs.
“A source said the daughter was breeding the dogs, but there was no sign of dogfighting in the house. She told investigators the dogs were afraid of her father because his voice was loud.”
There’s the first sign of irresponsible ownership. A breeding pair of dogs in the home with puppies, and they just happen to be scared of the man they’re living with. This is on the CDC’s list of things much, much more important than breed of dog when it comes to fatalities. Intact dogs, breeding pairs, dogs running loose, and chained dogs are much more likely to be aggressive.
There are five to ten million pit bulls in this country, and since their rise in popularity we have not seen any dramatic increases in the average number of dog bite deaths. When pit bulls were not popular, the same number of people were killed by dogs. Last year, 19 people were killed by dogs that are not pit bulls. Were they all flukes? Unfortunately, they all had the same set-up as this unfortunate tragedy: irresponsible ownership.
Shouldn’t have fallen asleep with that hamburger on his chest.
Yep, every time they happen, they're rare.
In fact, the more they happen, the rarer they are.
Or so goes the official storyline...
Each year about 30 people are killed by dogs.This would indicate that last year about 11 people were killed by dogs that WERE pit bulls.Last year, 19 people were killed by dogs that are not pit bulls
Okay, there are around 500 breeds of dogs, of which about 150 are recognized by the American Kennel Club. That suggests that between 0.2% and 0.6% of dogs are in each breed, on average (of course the individual populations vary widely).
I doubt that pit bulls account for a third of the total dog population. Yet you say 36% of the human deaths (11/30) were caused by one breed - pit bulls. About 100 times more than would be predicted by the population averages.
That's what you said, right? Just checking.
I readily admit would be better to do the percentages based on how many individual dogs there are, but I don't have reliable figures on the dog populations of pit bulls vs. non-pit bulls. If you do, please take over with those numbers.
http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/statistics.html
Dog Bite Statistics
The most recent official survey, conducted more than a decade ago, determined there were 4.7 million dog bite victims annually in the USA. A more recent study showed that 1,000 Americans per day are treated in emergency rooms as a result of dog bites. In 2007 there were 33 fatal dog attacks in the USA. Most of the victims who receive medical attention are children, half of whom are bitten in the face. Dog bite losses exceed $1 billion per year, with over $300 million paid by homeowners insurance.
There currently are 74.8 million dogs in the USA.
Almost 800,000 bites per year — one out of every 6 — are serious enough to require medical attention.
Dog bites send nearly 368,000 victims to hospital emergency departments per year (1,008 per day). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
16,476 dog bites to persons aged 16 years or greater were work related in 2001.
Every year 2,851 letter carriers are bitten.
Over 50 percent of the bites occur on the dog owner’s property.
The vast majority of biting dogs (77%) belong to the victim’s family or a friend.
An American has a one in 50 chance of being bitten by a dog each year.
The number of fatal dog attacks in the USA has been going up. The yearly average was 17 in the 1980s and 1990s; as stated above, there were 33 deaths in 2007, 23 in 2008, and 30 in 2009.
The statistics on fatal attacks are more accurate, and more current, than those on dog bites in general. Researchers have to be careful to use current numbers when reporting about canine homicides, because of the sharp increase over the past decade. The yearly number of fatal dog attacks in the USA is variously reported as 12, 17 and 26, but this discrepency is caused by citing studies which took place in different years. It is most accurate to say that the average number was 17 in the 1980s and 1990s, and that it has risen to over 30 in this decade.
The states that led the death toll in 2007 were Texas (7 deaths, one bite state), Georgia (4 deaths, mixed statute state), and Tennessee (4 deaths, mixed statute state). The highest percentage of deaths occured in the one bite states and the mixed statute states.
Dog attack victims in the US suffer over $1 billion in monetary losses every year. That $1 billion estimate might be low — an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that, in 1995, State Farm paid $70 million on 11,000 claims and estimated that the total annual insurance cost for dog bites was about $2 billion.
Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People, has conducted an unusually detailed study of dog bites from 1982 to the present. (Clifton, Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada, September 1982 to November 13, 2006; click here
http://www.dogbitelaw.com/Dog%20Attacks%201982%20to%202006%20Clifton.pdf
to read it.) The Clifton study show the number of serious canine-inflicted injuries by breed. The author’s observations about the breeds and generally how to deal with the dangerous dog problem are enlightening.
According to the Clifton study, pit bulls, Rottweilers, Presa Canarios and their mixes are responsible for 74% of attacks that were included in the study, 68% of the attacks upon children, 82% of the attacks upon adults, 65% of the deaths, and 68% of the maimings. In more than two-thirds of the cases included in the study, the life-threatening or fatal attack was apparently the first known dangerous behavior by the animal in question. Clifton states:
“If almost any other dog has a bad moment, someone may get bitten, but will not be maimed for life or killed, and the actuarial risk is accordingly reasonable. If a pit bull terrier or a Rottweiler has a bad moment, often someone is maimed or killed—and that has now created off-the-chart actuarial risk, for which the dogs as well as their victims are paying the price.”
Clifton’s opinions are as interesting as his statistics. For example, he says, “Pit bulls and Rottweilers are accordingly dogs who not only must be handled with special precautions, but also must be regulated with special requirements appropriate to the risk they may pose to the public and other animals, if they are to be kept at all.”
http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/heifer-merritt-13apr03.html
http://laanimalwatch.blogspot.com/2008/06/merrit-cliftons-methodology.html
http://lassiegethelp.blogspot.com/2009/03/merritt-clifton-list-updated-still-with.html
The guy is an extreme animal rights activist/kook.
> In more than two-thirds of the cases included in the study, the life-threatening or fatal attack was apparently the first known dangerous behavior by the animal in question.
Holy cow.
There's the statistic I was looking for in my post #11 above. Thanks.
So the statistics he lists are not true?
How dare humans believe they are superior in strength and intelligence to dogs!? How dare they I say !
They are not to be trusted.
His methodology is suspect.
His ‘data’ is derived from newspaper accounts.
Out of 33 deaths, 19 of those were not from pit bull-type dogs. That is according to the site I will post here, and they obtained their information the only way it exists, which is through media reports. Any additional information was most likely found through witnesses and animal control records.
http://btoellner.typepad.com/kcdogblog/2010/01/2009-dog-bite-fatalities-final-report.html
There are anywhere from five to ten million pit bulls, and most would say it’s much closer to the ten million mark considering the sheer number of them being picked up by ac as strays (representing well over 60% in many shelters), registration numbers, and advertisements from breeders. There are only 70 some million dogs, and out of those, a large amount, possibly up to half, will be small dogs. Take the smaller dogs away (simply to show similarly-sized dogs together) and you have about two thirds of the population (of 35 million medium to large breed dogs) non-pit bull-type dogs. That leaves a third that are what most would call pit bulls. That doesn’t mean they are, but that is what the media reports them as, so that is what we are discussing here.
Take also into consideration that every fad “tough” dog is popular with the crowd that wants them to be bad, and therefore tries their hardest to make them that way. Then you have the well-meaning yet uneducated that think all dogs are furry people. Then you have the smallest population, those that do their homework before getting a dog and decide to do things the right way. Of these three groups, which ones are most often seen on the news? The ones with the family-raised, spayed/neutered/socialized inside dog? Those with the dog that is chained up in the yard/running the neighborhood and intact? Or those owners that don’t exist because they never came forward to claim the dog?
There are over 50 breeds of dog that have taken lives, yet only a handful that end up being reported on more than one news station, as is mentioned on the above link.
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