Help! the dogs are attacking my mum
Daughter’s plea as 44-year-old mauled to death at her home
THE desperate daughter of a woman savaged by her two pet bulldogs screamed ‘the dogs are attacking mum’ as she begged neighbours to help.
Care assistant Elayne Stanley, 44, bled to death following the frenzied attack in her home.
The dogs had turned on her while she was arguing with eldest daughter Louise.
The 21-year-old ran for help – but neighbours were unable to get inside the living room where Miss Stanley was being mauled behind the door.
They called the emergency services and eventually managed to distract the animals. But, by the time, paramedics arrived, there was little they could do.
Miss Stanley, a mother of three, was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after 5.15pm on Tuesday.
Her 12-year-old twin daughters are thought to have been inside the terraced house in Widnes, Cheshire, at the time.
Police yesterday confirmed that one of the dogs – a male named DJ – was shot dead for safety reasons soon after they arrived.
The other, a bitch named Billy, was tranquillised and is being cared for at police kennels.
Both dogs are believed to be American Bulldogs. They are legal in the UK but officers will be investigating whether they had been crossed with any breeds on the banned list. The four banned breeds are Pit Bull Terriers, Japanese Tosas and two South Amerithe can breeds – Dogo Argentinos and Fila Brasileiros.
Last night, Miss Stanley’s partner Paul Leigh, 43, a full-time carer, who did not live with Miss Stanley, said: ‘Elayne and her daughter Louise were having an argument but I don’t know exactly what’s happened.
‘They’re both Elayne’s dogs – she’s had them since they were basically pups. [They] were never aggressive or acted like this. I can’t believe it.
‘We’ve been together four years and we’re both dog lovers.’
Miss Stanley’s close friend Bev Hall, 39, said she and her partner were alerted when Louise arrived at their home opposite.
‘We were putting the tea on and next thing Louise runs in screaming for help, saying: “The dogs are attacking mum,”’ she said. ‘We dropped everything and ran over bare-footed.
‘The living room door was closed and Elayne was behind it so we couldn’t get in. I could hear a dog growling and scratching. We threw all sorts and banged on the windows to try to distract the dogs.
‘My partner and a couple of the neighbours started throwing bricks at the dogs from the side door. Once the dogs were in the back garden, my partner locked them out.’
Miss Hall said she had known Miss Stanley, who has two young grandchildren, for 22 years.
She added: ‘By the time the paramedics came, there was nothing they could do, Elayne had bled out. The police tried to tranquillise DJ three or four times but he wouldn’t calm down. He had the taste of blood so he went for the officers and they had to put him down. He was shot twice but Billy was tranquillised and taken away.’
Miss Hall added she had never seen the dogs, which she said Miss Stanley had owned for two or three years, display any violent behaviour. ‘They used to bark when you went in and Elayne had started shutting her curtains because they would bark when people went past,’ she said. ‘But I have never known the dogs to act that way. My kids have slept on those dogs and used them as pillows.’
Miss Stanley’s Facebook page contains several pictures of the dogs. In one post, she said they had become ‘p*ssed off’ when she wouldn’t let them play with one of her children’s teddy bears. In another, a friend appeared to refer to the dogs as ‘the terrible twins’.
Detective Inspector Ian Whiley, from Cheshire Police, said: ‘This has been an extremely distressing incident and our thoughts are with the woman’s family at this difficult time.’
‘Banged on window to distract them’
He had been told Brussels would never reopen the withdrawal agreement, or make changes to the backstop, or consider temporary arrangements to avoid a hard Irish border.
Yet despite the attempted ‘sabotage’ of the opposition parties, all these points were now under discussion and a deal was far from out of the question.
The people wanted to ‘get Brexit done’ and that was his intention.
He then turned his fire on the ‘gridlocked’ Commons, exhorting MPs to face up to their responsibilities and give the people a say. Earlier, Mr Cox had put it more succinctly. ‘This Parliament is dead,’ he said.
The Mail couldn’t agree more. The corpse may still be twitching but life as we know it has departed.
There are just two ways to breathe new life into its mortal remains. MPs must back a Brexit deal or call a general election – or preferably both.
If this Parliament can’t decide on a way forward, the public must have the opportunity to elect one which can. That is democracy in action.
This is not just the Mail’s view. our poll today shows a clear majority (55 per cent) of the public want an early election, with just 29 per cent saying they don’t.
Among Mr Corbyn’s own supporters the figure is even higher. Nearly two-thirds of those who voted Labour in 2017 want a snap poll now, making their leader’s reticence even more puzzling – on the surface at least.
The answer, however, is found elsewhere in our survey. An election now could see Labour trounced.
For all their recent travails, the Tories are still out in front of Labour, and Mr Johnson is a massive 23 points ahead of Mr Corbyn on the question of who would make the better prime minister.
It’s quite obvious ordinary people recoil from Mr Corbyn’s Marxist prospectus, with its plans for appropriation of private property, abolition of private schools, uncontrolled immigration and theft of patents from pharmaceutical companies.
But ruinous as it would certainly be, if he truly believes in his Socialist nirvana, he must put it to the electorate. He can’t hide behind the sofa forever.