COP HELD 7st POLICE DOG BY ONE FINGER
Animal in ‘fight mode’ as it bit gran
A POLICE dog handler told yesterday how he was holding a 7st German Shepherd by one finger before it savaged a grandmother.
Irene Collins, 73, who died four days later, screamed “Why is this happening to me?” as she was mauled by the animal in her kitchen.
Pc Mark Baines told an inquest into her death the dog, named Dano, was in “fight mode” when it turned on the innocent OAP while on the trail of a drug dealer thought to be hiding in her back garden.
After Dano bit Irene on the arm, Pc Baines took hold of it with a single finger through a loop in a chain around its neck.
He managed to drag the dog away but as he adjusted his grip Dano backed out of his collar and grabbed her leg.
A pathologist who conducted a postmortem on Irene said she would have lived if she had not been bitten, despite suffering from cancer and emphysema.
Pc Baines told the hearing in Middlesbrough the dog may have attacked because she tried to “shoo” it away with her arms after it burst into her home four years ago.
He also suggested the voice of colleague Sgt Neil Yates might have agitated Dano.
“He was screaming into his radio, there was a lot of noise and that would only heighten the state of the dog,’’ PC Baines said.
The hearing continues.