More death by pit

Ireassure readers that I’ll not be dissuaded from continuing to write about people and their gentle pets being maimed and killed by dangerous unrestrained large dogs. I’ll never understand anyone who tries to defend owners who allow their potentially dangerous dogs to roam outside their control any more than I’d accept Bubba Klueless turning his pet cougar loose on the public.

And I question the discernment capacity of anyone who tries to make it appear I’m against dogs in general. I’ve had them all my life and couldn’t be closer to our Benji. But if Benji (who was mauled and almost killed by a crazed pit bull mix) was a large dog from a breed with a documented predisposition for violence, I assure you he would be tightly controlled at all times.

According to the DogBiteLaw website, of the 51 Americans killed by dogs in 2021, 37 were by one or more pit bulls and their mixes, and 21 of the victims were either the owner or a member of the owner’s family. Give me a golden retriever any day.

Remember the elderly Arkansas woman who was recently slaughtered in her own backyard by three of her neighbor’s ineffectively restrained pit bulls? As of last weekend we can add another Arkansas woman, from Genoa, an unincorporated community in Miller County, to the list of many innocents slain by pit bulls and their mixes.

Media accounts say Brenda Witt, 60, was in her yard the afternoon of Sept. 24 when a pack of five roaming dogs attacked her. Badly mauled, she managed to escape into an abandoned car on the property with no battery, which meant she couldn’t honk the horn for help. She also didn’t have a cell phone with her and no one else was around. (Sounds like a scene from the terrifying movie “Cujo.”)

It was there her lifeless body was discovered by her daughter when she returned from church.

Sheriff’s officers on the scene quickly determined she’d been the victim of an animal attack and tracked down the killer dogs and their owner. Since Miller County has no animal control division, officers with the nearby Texarkana Animal Control detained the dogs, which have since been euthanized. While the sheriff’s office hadn’t received previous reports about the pack of dogs before Witt’s death, other reports have since surfaced; the office confirmed all five believed to have attacked Witt were pit bull mixes.

People throughout the closely knit hamlet of fewer than 1,000 residents began posting memorials and testimonials about Brenda Witt as word spread though the community. A GoFundMe page was established to help her family cover funeral expenses.

I feel certain those who allowed these dogs to run free will be charged with negligent homicide. Oh wait, I forgot, never mind. Our state has no law covering accountability for unrestrained vicious dogs that savagely kill and maim innocents. That’s in other states.

I will say those criminally irresponsible people who kept and regularly fed these beasts they call pets should be more than willing to step up and pay for Brenda Witt’s final expenses.

If this tragedy wasn’t bad enough, and to further demonstrate these killings have no geographic borders, just two days later, 70-year-old Diane Knepper was found dead in her Toledo, Ohio, backyard, a victim of her own pit bull mix.

It wasn’t the first attack in Toledo. In February, Bonnie Varnes, 58, was found unconscious in her yard. She’d been severely mutilated by a family pit bull and later died at a Toledo hospital.

The Toledo Blade reported that arriving officers found Varnes lying face down in her backyard. Officers spoke to her adult daughter, Amelia, who said she returned home after receiving a call from her neighbor. When she arrived, she found her mother covered in blood. She told police her pit bull, Amenia, was also covered in blood.

She locked Amenia in the garage. The daughter afterwards described Amenia as being vicious “at times,” according to the news article.

A story on Dogsbite.org reported, “The last time Amelia saw her mother alive was around 8:30 a.m. on the day of the fatal attack, according to police. Varnes had worked for Washington Local Schools as a bus driver for over three decades. In a statement to WTVG, the company said, ‘Bonnie worked for WLS for over 30 years and was a deeply loved, valued member of our transportation team. We are devastated by this loss.’”

But there’s more. During the 2021 pandemic, two Toledo adults were killed by pit bulls less than a month apart. A 31-year-old woman was killed by her roommate’s pit bull on July 18. Her roommate claimed the dog that had clamped onto her neck was “trying to save her.” On Aug. 12, a 26-year-old man was fatally bitten in the neck by a pit bull while visiting the dog owner’s home. The co-owner of that dog claimed it was trying to help wake up the man. The denial is astounding.

Now go out into the world and treat everyone you meet exactly like you want them to treat you.