FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - A mother and son are speaking out one day after they came to the aid of a Broward County Animal Control officer who, police said, was being mauled by a dog in Fort Lauderdale.
Fort Lauderdale Police units responded to the scene of the incident along the 700 block of Southwest 14th Terrace, at around 7:15 p.m. on Thursday.
Responding officers arrived to find the victim suffering from a dog bite.
Area resident Saskia Peralta called 911 when she witnessed the attack.
“The dog is attacking animal control. Please, the lady is screaming for help!” she told the dispatcher.
“Who does the dog belong to?” said the dispatcher.
“Please, send somebody,” said Peralta.
Peralta and her son, Gregory Campbell, spoke with 7News on Friday.
“The time frame, of course, in a situation like that, feels like forever,” said Peralta.
“There is really nothing really running through your mind other than help somebody,'” said Campbell.
The animal control officer was at the property performing what county officials described as an animal welfare check. That’s when the dog turned on her, latching onto her neck.
Campbell, 24, said he had heard the commotion and ran over to help.
“We were relaxing in the house, my mother and I, and we heard screaming from our next-door neighbor’s yard,” he said. “We looked over the fence to see that one of our neighbor’s dogs is mauling an animal control employee.”
That’s when Peralta dialed 911.
“The dog is mauling here, there’s a dog mauling her,” she told the dispatcher.
Campbell said he ended up using a knife to stop the dog,
“The dog saw me coming with the knife, so it proceeded to attack me, and I attacked the dog with the knife as well,” he said.
“When I saw the dog go after my son, mother instinct kicked in, and that dog went down on the ground,” said Peralta. “To restrain that dog is very powerful. Very, very powerful. Even after the dog was on the ground, it was still trying.”
By the time police arrived, both Campbell and Peralta were covered in the victim’s blood.
“We were talking to her, keeping her conscious, asking her what her name was, where she was from,” said Campbell. “The amount of times she was bitten, I think that if another one or two minutes had passed, she would not have survived. She was losing a lot of blood.”
Campbell suffered minor injuries as a result of the scuffle, but he is expected to be OK.
“My son took action. I am grateful to God for his valor, for showing up,” said Peralta as she broke down in tears.
“Any reasonably good human being would have done the same thing,” said Campbell.
“The woman was pleading for her life, and my heart just breaks for her,” said Peralta.
Neighbors said the owner of the dog was unable to intervene since she was holding back her other large dog.
Paramedics with Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue transported the patient to Broward Health Medical Center with life-threatening injuries. According to authorities, she is expected to recover, but she faces a long road to recovery ahead.
“I hope and pray that she will be OK, because no one should ever have to deal with that,” said Peralra. “She was just doing her job.”
The circumstances leading to the initial welfare check are unclear.
According to Broward Animal Control, the dog has since been euthanized.
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