Dog attack leaves woman crippled
Neighbours at odds over bite injuries
A TUGELA mother of two is living in agony more than 18 months after being attacked by her neighbour’s dogs and fears she may never be able to work again.
Visalatchee Naicker, 49, needs crutches to walk and has been receiving psychological counselling and physiotherapy since she was bitten by her neighbour’s dogs in October 2012.
“[The doctors] said I’ll be on crutches,” said Naicker. “My leg is bent because I’ve got a plate inside it.”
Charges of keeping dangerous dogs are pending against the neighbour, Premdu Singh.
Naicker, a former clothing factory worker, said she fractured a leg and suffered multiple bite wounds when she was brought down by four dogs while standing outside the gate of her rented home.
Her house is on the same plot as Singh’s house, which is fenced.
Naicker said she cried out for her husband, Ganasen Pillay, to come and help her. Pillay, who receives a disability grant, also walks with crutches because of back problems.
Pillay said that after he screamed at the dogs, Singh intervened and the dogs ran back into their yard.
He said Singh accompanied Naicker to a doctor, who sent her to be X-rayed.
Naicker said she went home after the X-rays, but she had to be taken to Stanger Hospital later that night when her wounds began bleeding.
At the hospital, Naicker was given an injection to combat rabies because the Singhs could not produce a rabies certificate.
When approached for comment, Singh said: “I only can tell you that the gardener left the gate open and he went away and the dogs went to bite the next-door lady’s dog.
“In the process, the dogs bit her. For all I know, her dog also bit her — not only my dogs.”
She said two of her dogs, not four, had been involved.
“And the dogs didn’t go for her . . . They went for her dogs because all her dogs . . . come and provoke my dogs.”
Singh denied that Naicker’s leg had been fractured and declined to comment further.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Natasha Ramkisson-Kara said: “The accused is being charged in terms of contravening the municipal by-laws.”