Dog shot after attacking at least two people in downtown Roanoke
By Matt Chittum matt.chittum@roanoke.com 981-3331 Mar 29, 2018 (20)
A man tries to force the biting dog to release from another man’s right arm Thursday morning in downtown Roanoke. The dog had previously attacked a woman in the 100 block of Campbell Avenue Southwest. It was later shot by a witness to the event.
MATT CHITTUM | The Roanoke Times
A dog loose on a downtown Roanoke street attacked two people Thursday morning before a bystander shot it with a handgun.
Two people were taken to the hospital in ambulances for treatment, but names or conditions were not available. The dog was taken from the scene with two gunshot wounds to Angels of Assisi, where it was euthanized, Roanoke police Capt. Chester Smith said.
The dog’s owner, who lives in an apartment in the same area where the attack happened, said the dog got out when he opened the door, Smith said. The owner has not been charged at this time. The incident is still under investigation.
The dog, a white English bull terrier, first attacked a 34-year-old woman on the sidewalk on the south side of the 100 block of Campbell Avenue Southwest in front of Hill Studio about 10:20 a.m. Smith said the woman was pushing a stroller with a toddler inside of it, and when the dog approached aggressively, she picked up the child. The dog bit her in the arm and knocked her to the ground.
Passengers from a Valley Metro bus came to her aid, one hitting the dog with a cane, to no avail. The dog soon turned on the man with the cane, clamping its jaws on the man’s right forearm, refusing to relinquish its grip for several minutes.
“Somebody get it off me!” the man pleaded.
Steve Harris, a barber at Mr. Bill’s Hairstylist, rushed into the street when he heard a woman scream. A dog lover, he thought a dog had been hit. He soon found himself watching the dog clamp down on the man’s arm.
“I just grabbed him by the choke collar and held him as long as I could,” Harris said. “He was chewing the guy’s arm off. What do you do? You’ve got to do something. You think, ‘What if that was me?’ ”
While Harris tried to choke the dog until it released, another bystander sprayed the dog’s face repeatedly with pepper spray.
It only released its grip a while later, causing the crowd to scatter. The dog soon pursued the man bitten on the arm, who tried to escape into Mr. Bill’s. The dog tried to enter the business but Harris, who was back in the shop, closed the door on its head. Harris said he kicked at the dog to get it to back out of the door, and the dog bit his shoe. Harris wasn't injured in the ordeal.
Other bystanders used what looked like a dust mop to keep the dog at bay, but it soon went after another person. A man hit the dog with a hammer, and it wandered into the street.
Paul Burek, who was servicing a copy machine at Curry Copy, had witnessed the whole event and had earlier retrieved his small handgun from his car.
“Somebody was screaming shoot it, and I thought, concealed carry, somebody around here’s gotta have a gun,” Burek said. “Fortunately I did.”
When the dog wandered back across the street, Burek shot it once. It kept moving, and Burek closed on it, shooting it again at close range and knocking it down.
“I thought once it got away from people, that was the time to shoot it,” Burek said.
As the dog wailed and writhed on the pavement, it continued to snap its jaws. Witnesses screamed for Burek to end the dog’s suffering.
But police and animal control arrived just then, took control of the dog and confiscated Burek’s gun.
A man who identified himself as the dog’s owner approached the animal control officer wearing no shoes saying, “He got out!”
The animal control officer told the man, “I have to be honest with you sir, he’s going to be euthanized.”
By the time the dog was carried off, however, it appeared to be motionless.
The police have dealt with the same dog in the past. On Dec. 26, 2017 at 2:23 a.m., officers went to the same area because the dog had run off the back porch of the apartment and bit a man on his hand, Smith said. The man went to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital for treatment. Animals wardens followed up on the incident, but the man did not want to file charges.
“I love dogs,” Harris, the barber, said as he reflected later. “There’s not a better friend in your life, but I have never seen anything like this, ever.”
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