Posted on 08/09/2003 1:08:38 PM PDT by Brooklyn_Park_MD
Brooklyn infant is killed in home by family pit bull Parents had stepped out on porch; police shoot dog -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Jessica Valdez and Alec MacGillis Sun Staff Originally published August 9, 2003
A 2-week-old Brooklyn infant was killed yesterday by his family's pit bull after the baby's parents stepped outside and left him alone in their house with the dog, police said.
Responding to the incident at 3:15 p.m. in the 4200 block of Audrey Ave., police found the dog loose in the street and shot it, firing multiple times to make sure it was dead, witnesses said.
The child's death and the shooting shocked a neighborhood where residents said they had not had any problems with the dog.
Neighbors identified the baby as Terry Allen Jr. He was lying in a swing on the second floor of his family's rowhouse when he was killed, neighbors said.
Tonya Everhart, a friend and co-worker of the baby's mother, Stacie Morgridge, said the baby's parents left the infant alone briefly while they stepped outside to smoke cigarettes.
"They don't smoke around the baby," Everhart said.
When Morgridge and her 29-year-old boyfriend, Terry Allen - the father of the child - went back inside, they found the swing knocked over and the baby lying on the floor looking blue and limp but not mauled, said Everhart, who works with Morgridge at the nearby Charlie Ward convenience store.
The baby, who went by the nickname "T.J.," was rushed to Harbor Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Police spokeswoman Nicole Monroe confirmed that the parents were on their front porch at the time of the attack but said police aren't sure what they were doing there.
Monroe said that no criminal charges have been brought against either parent but that that has not been ruled out.
"At this point, no one has been charged. The investigation is ongoing," Monroe said. "Of course we're not ruling anything out. The detectives are being open-minded."
The dog bit the baby "multiple times," Monroe said.
Neighbors who spoke with the parents speculated last night that the baby might have died because of being knocked out of the swing.
"The dog didn't intentionally hurt the child," said Michele Schmidt, who lives across the street.
After calling 911, Everhart said, the baby's parents chained the dog in the front yard, but she said the dog broke loose and jumped the fence.
When police arrived, Monroe said, the dog was roaming the street. Police shot it because they were worried it might jump into nearby yards where residents had gathered to watch.
"The dog was shot and killed because he posed a threat to everyone in the neighborhood," she said. "Children were out, and we didn't want it to get into yards where people were standing."
In the shooting, some bullet fragments smashed through a nearby car window. The breaking glass injured one of the car's occupants, who was treated at the scene.
Some neighbors watching the shooting questioned whether police overreacted by shooting the dog multiple times, saying one shot would have sufficed.
"It took five police and 15 to 20 [shots] to kill this dog," said John Pegram, who was moving furniture into his nearby business at the time of the shooting.
"They're here to protect and serve, and then they endanger people's lives. It doesn't take five police to kill a dog."
Added Cindy Shimel, a 10-year-old who lives across the street, "It was down on the ground, and they still kept on shooting for no reason."
Neighbors said the dog, who they thought went by the name "Jigga," lived inside the house and had never shown signs of viciousness. They said they often saw Morgridge, who was well known in the neighborhood, walk the dog around the block.
"He was the nicest dog in the neighborhood," said Cindy Shimel.
Neighbors estimated the dog's age to be about 7. Several said Morgridge had reported that the dog had appeared out of sorts since the baby was born.
Three hours after the shooting, the dog's carcass still lay in the middle of the street.
The child's death occurs roughly two years after the City Council narrowly defeated a bill to ban the city's estimated 6,000 pit bulls, a proposal prompted by a string of non-fatal dog attacks on children. City health officials said then that the Bureau of Animal Control lacked the resources to enforce a ban.
"We oppose this," Baltimore Health Commissioner Peter L. Beilenson said at the time. "We don't have the staff. If we pick up an animal, proving it is a pit bull is difficult."
Last year, the council passed a less stringent law to rein in violent dogs, a requirement that all cat and dog owners purchase a license for their pets and tag them with a tiny microchip implant that would make it easier for animal control officers to identify and seize violent dogs.
Anthony Bradford, director of the Bureau of Animal Control, said yesterday that he was unsure how many dogs have been licensed or seized under the new law.
About 1,000 dog bites are reported to the city Health Department each year, about 30 percent of them by pit bulls. But they are rarely fatal.
In 1994, a baby was mauled to death in an East Baltimore apartment when its mother visited a friend who was keeping her incarcerated boyfriend's pit bull. In 1985, a 57-year-old Edgemere woman was killed by her pit bull terriers.
Nationally, about 10 people a year are killed by dogs, most of them either by pit bulls or Rottweilers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Several jurisdictions have passed or considered bans on pit bulls.
At the same time, several cities and counties that have passed bans have encountered difficulties. In 2000, Cincinnati repealed a 13-year ban on pit bulls because the city was spending $200,000 a year to seize and euthanize less than 20 percent of the city's pit bulls, most of which had never bitten anyone.
Sun researcher Elizabeth Lukes contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun | Get home delivery
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Amadog Diallo, the latest urban martyr.
Must have been a hell of a fight!
A certain other breed, however, has never met a stranger:
Vicious, ain't he?
Oooops! Guess I qualify. What exactly did you expect to happen when smokers started getting vilified for smoking around children? We went outside....now we're blamed for doing that too.
Here's more info on this breed. The behavior of this breed in your article is extremely atypical. And from the sound of those who want the Presa, those will be dangerously aggressive. But it's natural temperment is not of fighting or viciousness.
There was a quiet, frail little old lady(no exaggeration) in Chicago that bought one of these things. It was for protection. She lived in one of those neighborhoods that never counts a single republican vote.
She never let the dog out except in her back yard. The postal employees were upset, because it barked and they could see it. One of the postals was a rotund female with a mouth and creative mind. She got together with a network's investigative team CBS, or ABC. They should up to interview the woman on film and have her explain why her dog barks at people.
They show was held in the alley behind her yard. Beats me what this had to do with postals, because the yard's not visable from the front where the mailbax is. Anyway, show starts with the TV jounalists and investigators calling outloud from the alley for her to come out. Blah, blah, blah... She says in a slow, quiet, crackly and frail voice, "go away, or I'll let the dog out."
They keep it up and interject with comments about how the old lady's dog's a menace. Blah, blah, blah... She says again, go away, or I'll let the dog out. She said it at least 4 times if not more.
I was dumbfounded why they were pestering her. The dog never got out, was kept in the house most of the time and the "witnesses" were just trashing the bread anyway and telling the cameras how much they feared them.
The TV folks got impatient, because the old lady wasn't cooperating, so then they entered the yard. The same voice was heard from inside the house, with just a hair increase in tempo. She said, "I told you I was going to let the dog out."
Then you hear this potent WOOF, WOOF from inside the house and a second later BANG, as the screen door flies open and the dog flies out. The thing was like a hornet in flight. w/o a break in stride the thing hopped up and chompped on the rotund postal's bossom and flopped back and forth like a fish. She screamed, shook back and forth with her hands in the air as the men on the crew tried to pull the dog off with all their might. Which wasn't much, but it sure did stretch that bossom out. The dog was annoyed by one of the men, so with a single flop, he turned and latched onto this guys arm and the guy stood there trying to shake him off. Just like the dog on "Little Rascals" he hung on, stiff as a board. He had enough of that guy, so he flopped over back onto the postal that just standing there with a dumb look on her face. The dog only swung back and forth a couple times and an inaudible voice called the dog back in.
In a flash the dog was back accross the yard and the screen door swung open. The old lady never appeared. The folks in the alley were in complete disarray. Cameras shaking, panic, and ended it with some comment like, "what just happened?"
It was the best piece of journalistic film I have ever seen. It showed how these animals are obeydient, loyal, effective and an old lady's friend and hero.
#74
"YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP. Gah."
My brother's family has a Skipperke. I told them when it dies(or somebody kills it), I'll make him and his wife a headmount with an animated mouth and an endless audiotape that plays, "YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP..."
Yea, I felt sorry for the postal getting bit, but not all that much. She was there after all, trying to get the old lady's only protection taken with a mouthful of lies and scare tactics. They were in her yard and were warned on camera multiple times to leave. The other folks in the crowd mostly scattered.
That would be my Lhasa.
He just went to a new groomer. They gave me a too cute report card about his clip. It wasn't until I got home that I turned it over & found he'd been marked down because he "has some feet handling issues." I spent about a half an hour LMAO, because I *know* what he was like at the previous groomer (she closed her shop because she's pregnant). My Little Precious was wretched when he went there, so bad they kept his leash on him so they could drag him out of his cage without getting chomped. And he didn't have just "feet handling issues." He had *issues* with them clipping him just about anywhere. Or just touching him in general. And that's why I pay them to do it and I don't have to deal with it.
But because of his weasely YAP YAP YAP, he managed to break up a robbery & another incident where some alien invader was pounding on a neighbor's door at 1:30 a.m. And when the creepy nosy theiving neighbor tried to get into our fenced yard without me knowing it, the pup went ballistic. And that's why he stays. That, and he's my buddy.
If they did do it, at least they won't get away with it. the trauma of a dog bite on a live person and a dead person (even if very very recently dead) will be very different.
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