Owners busted for animal cruelty after Staten Island pit bulls get loose, bite 2-year-old girl and three others
A Staten Island teen, one of several people attacked when six pit bulls escaped through their owners’ open window, recalled the terrifying moment when the dogs charged him on the way home from school.
“They just came after me for no reason,” victim Aczel Pavia, 15, said Wednesday, one day after the dogs’ owners were arrested and a 2-year-old girl was also injured. “They just came and bit me. I also fell. I was just trying to run away.”
Suspects Rodney Jones, 48, and Shontay Holland, 29, were both charged with reckless endangerment, aggravated animal cruelty and endangering the welfare of a child after cops learned they were responsible for the dogs that attacked local residents Tuesday afternoon in New Brighton, police said.
“I saw the pit bulls in a pack,” said eyewitness Coralee Chandler, who lives nearby. “Some lady was coming up the hill and the dogs got her. They were coming out of everywhere ... Her shoes were still in the road.”
Pavia said the dogs veered away from him to chase one of the other victims, while Chandler recalled a chaotic scene in which a man climbed atop a car to escape the dogs. Drivers were forced to dodge the runaway pit bulls on the street as they drove through the neighborhood, said Chandler.
There were 10 dogs — six adults and four puppies, all of them pit bulls and pit bull mixes — inside the home when the adult canines managed to escape through an open window around 12:50 p.m., cops said.
“You see those dogs coming out every day,” said another local resident. “They leave it open and they get out.”
Cops are looking into the possibility the home was some kind of dog-breeding factory, a police source said.
The pack wandered a few feet to the corner of York and Prospect Aves., where they attacked two girls, ages 2 and 13, and a 19-year-old woman. The victims were bitten in the legs, arm and side as panicked neighbors called 911.
When cops arrived, the dogs were circling and jumping around the three victims, “actively attempting to bite people,” an NYPD spokesman said.
All three victims were taken to Richmond University Medical Center, where they were treated and released.
Another eyewitness told the Staten Island Advance that police used a taster on one of the pit bulls, only to watch the dog bounce back up and come at the officers.
After a few crazed minutes, one of the York St. home’s residents emerged to corral the dogs and bring them back inside.
The NYPD and Animal Care Centers of NYC took the six adult dogs and the four puppies, newly named “Snickerdoodle,” “S’More,” “Confetti” and “Hot Fudge Sundae,” to an Animal Care Center of NYC facility.
All of the adult dogs were put in City Department of Health quarantine because it wasn’t clear which of them bit the victims.
