LOS ANGELES – Jose Rodriguez, 77, says he was just walking down the street where he lives when he was attacked by a trio of pit bulls.
“My dad was severely attacked. He’s an elderly man and he was walking down the street…the dogs surrounded him and started mauling him from his waist down,” said his daughter Lupita Rodriguez.
“He grabbed onto the fence, tried to hold himself up, tried to get as high as he could up the fence. The dogs were attacking him from the legs pulling him down.”
Lupita said no one was with the dogs at the time of the attack.
She said they were “…not on a leash. They were unattended.”
And, she said her dad now needs tendon and ligament surgery.
About two months ago, another neighbor, Miguel Jara, said he was bit by the dogs too.
He said he was down the same street and he was bit “all around on my trunk here, here and here.”
The dogs are from a home where a woman named Heidi lives. She didn’t want to make her last name public.
She said she’s been taking care of them for someone who died, and she is trying to rehome them.
She claims both she and the dogs have been harassed by the neighbors.
She claims the dogs were antagonized and accused Jose of hitting them.
He said he did not attack them, but tried to fight them off when attacked.
Animal Control came to the neighborhood to investigate and decided to take the dogs away from the home for now, but just after they did that, there was a yelling and screaming match between a group of neighbors and Heidi.
It all became very tense.
“This is what happens when emotions get out of hand,” said Lupita’s brother Alberto Maytorena.
Alberto and sister Lupita defended their dad and accused the dogs’ caretaker of things like letting them run loose, creating a neighborhood danger.
And the tension?
“Everybody wants results. Everybody wants her to take action,” said Alberto.
What action?
She said they want Heidi to “take care of those dogs, get rid of those dogs and make sure those dogs are contained.”
Those three pit bulls went from Heidi’s home to a shelter, but what’s to happen to them next is completely unclear.
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