FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - A concerned father is speaking out about the dog attack in a Fort Lauderdale park that left his 5-year-old daughter’s face scarred.
Florian Becker said Tuesday afternoon’s attack has left his daughter “absolutely traumatized.”
The child is struggling to heal from a dog bite that required more than 50 stitches and staples to her face, shoulders, back and scalp.
Becker described the harrowing moments when a dog lunged at his daughter at Hortt Park, located at 1700 SW 14th Court, Tuesday afternoon.
“A lady with a dog walked up, like, there’s a lot of people here, and she invited the kids to come and pet the dog,” he said. “My daughter went up and pet him, and all of a sudden, the dog turned and bit her in the face.”
Screams and the dog’s barks were captured by a nearby surveillance camera.
“My wife screamed, tried to pull the dog back by its collar. The collar broke, and the dog attacked again, this time more viciously,” said Becker as he held back tears, “and she was grabbing the dog and biting it back, holding on to it, screaming at the woman to take control of her dog.”
The girl’s mother was finally able to free her daughter and rush her to the emergency room.
When police arrived at the park, Becker said, the dog and its owner were gone.
An image from a surveillance camera captures a woman walking her dog at the park.
Becker hopes the woman will come forward, in part to keep this from happening to anyone else, but also to avoid making his daughter’s situation even worse.
“We don’t know anything about the dog. We don’t know if it had its shots up to date,” he said. “We’re very concerned about rabies. It’s 100% fatal, and we would like to avoid putting our little daughter through the treatment or through the vaccine that would be required. She said last night, ‘Why are you looking at me?’ My wife said, ‘Because you’re beautiful,’ and she said, ‘No, I look like a monster,’ so these scars will be there for a long time.”
Becker said some of the swelling in his daughter’s face is going down, through she faces a long road to recovery. He added that she was lucky, because some of the bite wounds are very close to her eye, but it does not appear to be affected.
Officials with Broward County Animal Control urge anyone with information about the incident, the dog involved or its owner to contact them at 954-359-1313.
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