Young girl critically hurt in pit bull attack

The girl, said to be about 6 years old, was taken to a hospital and was undergoing surgery this afternoon for what police called critical injuries to her neck and head. The unidentified girl's mother was with her at the hospital.

The injuries were so severe that the first neighbors on the scene said they thought she was dead.

Troy Danford heard the screaming next door and ran outside with his .38-caliber handgun. He saw the animal on the front porch with the baby sitter's arm in its mouth, tugging at her. He fired into the air because he didn't want to shoot the woman. Then, when he had a clear shot, Danford took aim at the pit bull. At least one shot hit its legs.

Neighbor Kyle Mayeaux, a soldier at Fort Richardson, said he ran into the home after hearing the screaming and gunshots in the Glacier Terrace mobile home park off 33rd Avenue and Boniface Parkway and found the girl bleeding from the neck and appearing lifeless.

He felt a faint pulse and put pressure on her neck wound to stop the bleeding until medics arrived.

The motive for the attack is unclear. Danford said the baby sitter told him they were playing inside the trailer with Dozer and two other dogs when Dozer just snapped.

After the girl and baby sitter left in ambulances, two Animal Care and Control personnel arrived to haul away the offending dog, which was injured but alive underneath a trailer in a driveway.

Dozer would not come out, and police wielding shotguns watched as the men wrangled the animal out with catch poles and loaded it into a cage on the back of their truck. The pit bull had blood dripping down both its front legs, and its mouth was stained red.

Animal control spokesman Scott Gower said officers were picking up the two other dogs that lived in the mobile home as a precautionary measure.

"What we're going to do, we don't know at this point," he said.

Find James Halpin online at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call him at 257-4589.

We are continuing to report this story and will post further updates as soon as we have them. See tomorrow's newspaper for full details.