Police in a Massachusetts city say three people were injured - and two of them hospitalized - when they were attacked by a group of four pit bulls.
"My heart was pulsing, just kept on reliving it and wondering if I could have done anything different," said construction worker Ismael Martinez said.
Martinez says he can’t get the image out of his mind of the woman he saved from a pit bull attack on Howe Street in Fall River on Monday.
"They just grabbed her pocket book right here at the stop sign," said Martinez, "and just dragged her right to the ground."
Martinez said he leapt over the fence and tried to scare the pack of dogs away with this four foot level.
"I was swinging as much as I could trying just to keep them off the lady," he said.
The woman had a serious arm injury, but he got her to safety. Then, Martinez said, he could only watch as the dogs first went after another elderly woman feeding cats down the street, who was uninjured, then attacked a 54-year-old homeless man and his girlfriend.
"They were just ripping him apart, there wasn’t much I could really do," Martinez said.
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"We saw this gentleman on the floor with dogs just attacking him and his girlfriend was on the floor screaming," Nancy Bednarz, another witness, said.
Police say the man was transported to Rhode Island Hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. His 39-year-old girlfriend was also injured but treated at the scene.
"You could tell they were attacking, they were vicious dogs attacking," Bednarz said.
Police say the four pit bulls somehow got out of the gate of this dog pen at a home on Kilburn Street. They say their owner, 43-year-old Sherry King, will be summonsed to court, while the dogs have been put in a 10-day quarantine.
"We have to make sure that the dogs don’t have any type of diseases, rabies, et cetera, and we have to make sure that they’re safe to be released or also there’s a possibility they could be euthanized," Fall River Police Chief Daniel Racine said.
Chief Racine says there will be a hearing to determine what will happen to the pit bulls. Friends and relatives at King's home said she was not home and did not have a comment.
