A mother and her seven-year-old daughter were rushed to the hospital after being attacked by a dog while out shopping.
Gatekeepers News reports that Vicky Rafferty, 35, and her daughter Evie-Louise Mannion, seven, were at Gallagher Retail Park, Coventry, when the dog mauled them on June 6.
Vicky explained that the German Shepherd attacked her daughter for no apparent reason while they were walking. Vicky said she tried to pull the dog away from her defenceless daughter as she screamed in agony but ended up being attacked too.
She said: “We were between Aldi and Pets at Home at the Gallagher Retail Park on Monday, between 4.30pm and 5pm. We were walking along and it literally just attacked my daughter Evie-Louise.
“It pulled her to the floor. Luckily she pulled her hands up to her face but she got bites to her arms – it’s a mess.
“It grabbed her by her foot and pulled her to the ground and carried on biting her from her shoulder to just past her elbow. The dog just wasn’t letting go.
“I was pulling my daughter by her legs, anything to get her away from that dog.”
Vicky noted that when her efforts, along with those of the dog’s female owner, had no effect she resorted to desperate measures.
She said: “I managed to get it off my daughter by kicking it in the face. I was screaming, ‘Get my daughter away, get my daughter away’.”
“It let go of her after four kicks to the face. Then it got hold of me. I was on the floor and it was biting me.
“It was a six-year-old German shepherd. The owner was trying to pull it back by the harness but had no chance.”
Vicky said although the dog had a harness on it was not on a lead and added the owner said she had taken it to Pets at Home to be fitted for a muzzle.
Vicky suffered a number of bites, including puncture wounds to her hip and the top of her leg and estimated she was bitten five times.
“I was fighting it on the floor,’ she said. ‘I had a big padded coat on and it tore through that’.”
The owner eventually got control of the dog and managed to lock it in her car.
Vicky, who suffers from prolapsed discs in her spine, said she fainted twice in the wake of the attack.
The mother and daughter were treated at the scene before being rushed to University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire for further treatment and tetanus jabs.
Vicky said her daughter sustained around seven bite injuries, including a nasty puncture wound where fat tissue was exposed.
“It was the worst day of my life. I had to get sleeping tablets from my doctor and when I do go off I have flashbacks.”
She said that Evie-Louise is deeply traumatised by the incident. She faces a return visit to the accident and emergency department at UHCW to have an x-ray due to severe pain in her shoulder.
Vicky added: “She’s not sleeping well and crying and shouting in her sleep at night – ‘Mum, Mum, please, please’. She’s off school for the week, on antibiotics and still got an open wound.”
The 35-year-old mother said she was relieved the police took the dog away with a specialist dog unit from Birmingham.
However, she said she was concerned that “this dog could be back out there soon. I’m worried that it could attack a child again but next time it could be fatal.”
A spokesman for West Midlands Police said: “We were called to Gallagher Retail Park in Coventry on Monday, June 6 to reports a child had been bitten by a dog. The seven-year-old and her mother who suffered bruising were treated at the scene by paramedics.
“The dog, a German shepherd was seized under Section 3 of the Dangerous Dog Act. An investigation will now take place and the dog’s behaviour will be assessed.”
