Adopted Pit Bull Mauls and Kills Elderly Owner

On June 1st, just hours after being adopted, a pit bull attacked and killed its 90-year-old owner at her Virginia Beach, Virginia home.  The deceased’s daughter told WAVY that she witnessed the pit bull, “Blue” kill her mother in a vicious and unprovoked attack.

Notably, the daughter said she was playing with the dog outside and heard her mother cry for help because she had fallen down.  The door was locked, so she broke a glass pane with a hammer to let herself in.  When she did so, the dog rushed inside and started biting the victim on her neck and shoulders, shaking her violently.  Emergency medical care included an arm amputation.

Without wading into the discussion about pit bulls as a breed, I think that this dog probably had been trained to be aggressive or at least protective of its home before it was given to Forever Home Rehabilitation Center, where the victim obtained it.  One limitation of this sort of “rehabilitation” is that the facility may not know about prior aggression training with any given dog.  With pit bulls, so many are kept as poorly trained “protection dogs” that I am not surprised that this sort of fatal accident can result.

I have a case presently where one such “rehabilitated” dog attacked a client of mine.  If you or a loved one needs legal representation regarding a dog bite or wrongful death in Virginia, feel free to review my free information on dog bite cases on this site and contact me.