WEST BROWARD, FLA. (WSVN) - A woman visiting South Florida on vacation from Massachusetts got attacked by a pit bull running loose around a parking lot in the Everglades.
The dog’s owner, an adult man, allegedly watched the whole attack happen and did nothing to intervene before taking off.
Taite Beale is about to start her senior year in college. She’s from Massachusetts, so last Thursday on a trip to South Florida, she spent the day at Everglades Holiday Park with her boyfriend and his family going on an airboat tour.
“We were just leaving, so we’re going back to the parking lot, and that’s when we saw a gentleman and his dog, his pit bull running around the parking lot, and he was trying to call the dog, but he wasn’t listening,” Beale said.
Taite was walking to her car when she said an unleashed gray pit bull charged at her.
“That’s when the dog looked at me and ran over and just grabbed my arm,” she said.
The dog grabbed hold of her elbow and started biting into her muscles, ripping her arm apart.
“My boyfriend and his uncle and his dad went and started punching the dog and trying to get me away from him, punching and kicking the dog,” Taite said.
The dog finally let loose, and Beale was left with scratches on her legs and pieces of her arm hanging off.
“He said she’s very lucky. You know, there’s muscle damage in there. The way the dog bit into her, he was 4 millimeters away from her nerves,” said Taite’s mother, Tara Beale.
They called 911, and the dog owner grabbed the pit bull and left in a black Ford truck.
“He was kind of a tall, I would say, middle-aged gentleman,” Taite said. “He had a blond goatee, but he had a black Ford pickup truck with an American flag decal on the back window and some kind of toolbox in the back, too.”
They were able to get a partial license plate, and police are working to find him.
As for Taite’s mother…
“I’m mad. I’m damn mad because of the negligence of some gentleman to let his dog off to maul her,” she said. “It just infuriates me more so that he left without even caring about her wellbeing.”
Beale is back home. She’s already had one surgery and will have another one Thursday, but her arm now has a very bad infection, and that concerns doctors.
But what concerns the family more is the dog owner, who they said is still out there.
“I would like for him to be caught, one, to be held accountable, and two, so it doesn’t happen to someone else,” Taite said. “Imagine if it was a kid. It could’ve been worse. I’m lucky I’m OK.”
“This will happen again to somebody else, and this time we’re lucky. We’re lucky. The next person may not be,” Tara said.
If you know a person who fits the description of a middle-aged man with a blond goatee who has a gray pit bull and drives a black Ford pickup truck with a flag decal, call the Broward Sheriff’s Office at 954-831-8901.
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