Police unsure dog in fatal attack was a pit bull

It was a dog attack that killed a woman in her backyard and divided Montrealers over the question of pit-bull ownership. Now, as Montreal gets set to adopt a controversial bylaw that would ban the acquisition of pit-bull-type dogs, police are admitting they’re not entirely sure the dog that started it all was a pit bull.

When 55-year-old Christiane Vadnais was attacked in her Pointe-aux-Trembles backyard in June, Montreal police said the dog was a pit bull.

But on Wednesday, a spokesperson told Radio-Canada that police officers aren’t able to identify dogs “because we’re not canine experts. We have no expertise whatsoever to say that dog was a pit bull.”

Reached by the Montreal Gazette on Friday, Montreal police would not comment on the remarks, saying only that the criminal investigation is ongoing.

And the city doesn’t have its own proof yet: It is still waiting for results from DNA tests it ordered to determine the dog’s breed shortly after the attack, city spokesperson Geneviève Dubé said on Friday.

The attack caused a provincewide debate on the breed, and the proposed bylaw’s pit bull-specific sections have been heavily opposed.

Earlier this week, opposition party Projet Montréal denounced the bylaw, noting that it doesn’t define what physical characteristics will determine whether a dog is similar to a pit bull, nor who will make that determination.

In August, the Canadian branch of the Humane Society International said it received the dog’s registration from 2011. The paperwork shows that the beige-coloured dog was registered under the name “Lucifer” in Anjou and that its owner had identified it as a boxer. (An animal doesn’t need to be present when registered in Montreal.)

Ewa Demianowicz, a spokesperson for the group, said the bylaw goes against all scientific findings and opinions from experts on the subject.

Demianowicz said she wasn’t sure if it would have changed anything had police not initially called the dog a pit bull without confirmation, but that the proposed bylaw is another indication of a long-standing bias against the breed.

In the last 30 years in Quebec, she said, five other people have been killed by dogs, and all five cases involved dogs from the husky-breed family.

Yet there were never any laws considered to ban huskies in Quebec, she said.

“This is the first dog identified as a pit bull who kills someone, and everyone reacted right away,” she said on Friday.