ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Thursday morning, Angelina Slusser was outside her shop on Main Street in Canandaigua when she saw a pitbull jump on the back of a 10-year-old boy.
Child, father left seriously injured after dog attack in Canandaigua
“Then all hell broke loose,” she said. “It escalated and the kid just started screaming bloody murder and I knew at that point, OK, this is bad.”
She rushed over and threw her hand inside the dog’s mouth trying to get it to release the boy, but it wasn’t until someone else grabbed the dog’s tail it did so. That’s when it latched onto the dad’s tricep.
“The dad just kept screaming and wailing, ‘he’s ripping my arm, he’s ripping my arm,’ and there was just blood everywhere all over the sidewalk, all over me,” Slusser explained.
Following the attack, Angelina realized the dog had torn off her nail. After that, the father and son were treated at the hospital for serious injuries but were expected to live.
News 8 recently learned the dog had been causing trouble all month, attacking a 3-year-old before getting loose days later. Canandaigua City Manager John Goodwin said the city court judge who handled the case, had given the dog back to the owners under the stipulation that it had to be on a leash and muzzled when taken out. In the face of criticism over that decision, Goodwin said that due process was followed.
“A dog is a living being just like you and I. One incident doesn’t mean they should be euthanized necessarily. So, you have to look at all the facts at hand and make an appropriate decision and unfortunately just like sometimes a criminal will do it again, it happened here in this case and it’s just unfortunate,” he said.
Slusser, however, wonders if the judge, Jacqueline Sisson, and others could have stayed within the law while taking a different approach.
“It’s a failure on a lot of people’s parts, mostly the owner,” she began. “From my perspective, that dog did not have to be like that, that’s on the owner, but also for whoever is responsible for allowing this dog to continuously go back to that environment, that’s unacceptable because this could have been prevented.”
Judge Sisson, we were told, could not comment Friday, but we did find out this case goes back in front of her Tuesday. Meanwhile, last we heard; the dog is being held with the Ontario County Humane Society.
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