It appears as though a pit bull attack has claimed another life, with a woman in Washington D.C found to have been mauled to death by her pet this past Sunday. D.C Fire and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) responded to a home in the 1300 block of Dexter Terrace Southeast in the city at around 6:30 p.m. following reports of a dog attack.
According to the Daily Mail, the victim was later identified as one 55-year-old Angela Smith. She was rushed to the hospital for treatment but she succumbed to the life-threatening wounds she had sustained in the vicious attack. She was unconscious and suffering from what the police described as "multiple trauma wounds" and was pronounced dead a short while later.
Her husband, Rob Frazier, mourned his wife's death and said he had only been gone for 15 minutes when the horrifying incident unfolded. "I left out the house," he told WUSA9 fighting back his tears and banging a trash can. "I just left out the house. It was 15 minutes and I came back. She was dead."
He said Smith had a great relationship with the dog and he was unsure why it may have suddenly attacked her. "They were [sic] really buddies. I'm thinking she might have taken some food or something like that from him and he's real aggressive like that, right?" he told the station. "Maybe, just maybe, he reacted like that. That's what I'm hoping."
Frazier had received the pit as a puppy from his nephew and had had him for the past eight years. But following the attack, workers from the Humane Workers Alliance arrived at the residence at around 9 p.m. to remove the pit bull from the home. A video taken at the scene showed the tan-and-white dog snarling and resisting the workers' attempt to get it into a van.
The pit bull could be seen attempting to bite one of the crew members as he tried to get it into the vehicle, though they finally succeeded in doing so after using a blanket as a hoist to lift its hind legs off the ground. NBC4 reported the comments of a spokesperson for the Alliance who said that the dog had since been humanely euthanized.
Neighbors told Fox5 that they often saw Smith walking the pit bull in the area but that they never saw it show aggression towards any other person. However, they say it was aggressive towards other pets in the neighborhood, with local residents attesting that they would get their animals and small children out of the way when the dog was outside as a safety precaution.
