Two Dog Bite Attacks in South Carolina Lead to Questions about Liability and Responsibility
Two vicious dog bite attacks – one in Greenville and one in Spartanburg – have left two victims seriously injured, while another died.
The Greenville incident involved a dog that the family did not expect to become so brutal.
“The dog was not aggressive, he was a good dog,” said Heather Perez, who bought the dog for her mother, Angela Kennedy, for Mother’s Day.
“The dog is inseparable from my mom,” she added.
The dog, Bull, reportedly had a problem with loud noises and would often become frightened if they occurred. When Kennedy’s sister pulled up on a moped, the family assumed that the moped’s engine noises frightened Bull and he attacked Kennedy’s sister.
“When Teresa come back, I had him on the leash and she called him over and when she called him over there he grabbed her by her leg- and it was from then on. He wouldn’t let her go, he ripped her knee cap off,” Kennedy said. She said that when she tried to stop Bull from attacking her sister, he began to attack her.
Teresa Wells, the first dog bite victim, lost an arm in addition to suffering serious leg wounds. Officers were called to the scene, and they shot Bull, then attempted to stop Wells’s bleeding while they waited for an ambulance.
Because the dog attacked his owner on the owner’s property, there will be no criminal charges filed. However, Wells could potentially file a personal injury lawsuit.
Over the weekend, another severe dog attack killed a woman in Spartanburg.
Twenty-five year old Porsche Nicole Cartee died on Saturday night from her dog bite wounds. The dog reportedly attacked two other victims as well.
Cartee and her sister were trying to get the dog off their mother, when the dog turned and attacked Cartee and her sister. Cartee’s mother and sister suffered dog bite injuries, while Cartee died from the attack.
Cartee’s mother has to undergo surgery after the incident.
There is no evidence of any reason for the dog to have become so violent and attacked the family, according to Jamie Nelson, director of Spartanburg County Environmental Enforcement.
Cartee’s ex-boyfriend, Patrick Powell, said in one news report that the dog had been in the family since it was a puppy. It had attacked Cartee’s mother two months before the fatal incident, and he had recommended that the family put down the aggressive dog to prevent any other such incidents. However, the family refused.
