Posted on 11/26/2010 7:56:19 AM PST by devane617
A Tyler man has died after suffering a heart attack when he tried to help his mother-in-law stave off an attack by her neighbor's pit bulls.
Van Zandt County Sheriff Pat Burnett said the mother-in-law tried to intervene when the pit bulls attacked her two dogs Thursday, but was knocked down and bitten by one of the pit bulls.
The sheriff said the pit bull that bit the woman was stabbed and killed with a pocket knife by her son-in-law, who later had a heart attack while the woman was being treated.
Burnett told the Tyler Morning-Telegraph that paramedics couldn't revive the Van Zandt County man. He said the woman was hospitalized and the pit bulls were to be tested for rabies.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Yet another incident.
Can the dog owner be prosecuted for this?
Yes. I suspect the DA over in Tyler will press for a version of MS charges.
This breed should be eradicated. People are more important than animals and not a day goes by without one of these animals harming someone. It is a public safety issue.
Out here in E TX on the local news recently a Pit Bull killed a toddler and another maimed a little girl.
The news out here is reporting on a group which is trying to get legislation to put restrictions on the Pit Bull Breed. I don’t know how successful they will be, but something needs to be done.
I wonder if prescribed jail time for the owner of any attacking Pit Bull would inject responsible behavior on the owners?
No ages provided. Geesh.
I mean, it’s a bigger story if the son-in-law was in his 30’s vs. 50’s
You...have something against.... fat, balding, out of shape men...in their 50’s?
LOL! Happy Black Friday, BL!
I’m 65....but didn’t think somebody that age would have a MIL walking around. So I capped it at 50’s.
I could understand how a sudden adrenaline rush from fright and anxiety could cause a heart attack.
Outlaw all pocketknives!/s
RIP.
Pit bulls are just a symptom, not the problem. You see more of them in the news because they are one of the most popular types of dog (some estimates have them at 10 million, compared to 76 million total dogs), and because stories from pit bulls make much more money than stories by other breeds (this is a fact that several reporters have openly revealed).
Notice that the average number of human fatalities has not risen because of a rise in pit bull numbers. The average has been slowly rising since we have bothered to calculate it, and it parallels the increase in both human and canine populations. Take away pit bulls, and another dog will take its place at the top of the list, just as before they were popular, several other breeds had. In the late 1800’s it was the bloodhound, in the early to mid 1900’s it was Newfoundlands, a few decades ago it was German Shepherds, Great Danes, and even Golden Retrievers (they had more deaths in one year than Dobies!). Interestingly, the pit bull was extremely popular during the time that bloodhounds were being blamed for the majority of deaths, but since pit bulls of that time were valued as family pets (and some as fighting dogs or farm dogs), there were no reported fatalities from them.
Breed bans are illegal under Texas state law. In addition, several cities in this country have had long-standing breed bans, and none of them have reported a reduction in overall attacks, even serious ones. In other countries, breed bans have also been enacted, and the same results can be seen. In the UK, the amount of attacks has actually increased since the bans, and they are seriously considering repealing bsl in favor of responsible ownership laws. One place that has seen a dramatic reduction in attacks is Calgary. They did not ban pit bulls or any other breed. They opted for responsible ownership laws that targeted all dog owners, and because of their efforts in enforcing their laws, not only are dog attacks greatly reduced, but the percentage of licensed dogs is somewhere around 90%, which is unheard of in most other places.
As for this story, the dogs were running loose (and most likely being used to breed), which screams irresponsible ownership. As for the death in this case, the man wasn’t even bitten by the dogs, and having a heart attack means this man was probably on his way to having one anyway. You don’t just have a heart attack under stress if your heart is healthy.
I am all for getting something done about the issue of dog attacks, but to ignore the real cause and pass laws that are not a solution will be counterproductive, and will cost a lot of responsible people their family pets (the criminals and buttheads whose dogs are causing trouble will probably keep them illegally anyway, as is the case in the UK, where the population of pit bull type dogs has risen substantially since their bans) as well as not reduce attacks or fatalities.
Ontario banned pit bulls too. They had one death from a pit bull in the last 45 years, and regularly have an average of two deaths a year (mostly from sled-type dogs). Their ban has not reduced deaths at all, because the dogs causing them are not regulated, and if they were, Canadians would find another breed to tie up in packs outside, and the tragedy would continue.
“This breed should be eradicated. People are more important than animals and not a day goes by without one of these animals harming someone. It is a public safety issue.”<<<<<<
You are right, people are more important than animals, but eradicating the breed will not stop attacks from happening. Look at all the places that have breed bans. Not a single one has had a reduction in attacks, not even serious ones. The irresponsible owners just get other dogs to mess up.
As for the stories we read on a daily basis regarding pit bulls and public safety, consider this: Public Health records show that there are on average 13 thousand dog attacks every single day in this country, 2 thousand of which require hospitalization. Out of those, we only see attacks by pit bulls on the news (one or two a day sound about right?) so why is there such a huge discrepancy between these records and the media reports? Why are the other attacks not reported? It can’t possibly be because pit bull attacks are always worse, because even on this very site I can pull up several news stories regarding pit bulls where no one was even bitten!
I would love to see dog attacks disappear, but banning specific breeds is not the answer, and it has not worked anywhere it has been implemented. Responsible ownership laws, or even a better job of enforcing current laws, will be a much better way of reducing dog attacks (and it’s been proven way more successful than bred bans).
In this case, the dogs were in a pack running loose, which is an owner issue. If they were valued family pets, they would have been inside with their family, but something tells me their yard was their home, and this is a situation that is all too common in these attack stories.
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