THURSTON COUNTY, Wash. — An elderly woman -- who is also a World War II veteran -- has life-threatening injuries after getting mauled by several dogs at a Thurston County home.
The attack occurred while the woman, in her 90s, was visiting a neighbor's house in the Scott Lake community at about 6 p.m. Sunday night.
It is easy to imagine the horror 92-year-old Gladys Alexander faced when she walked across the street late yesterday to give her neighbor the newspaper as she had for a decade.
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She wasn't there but the four pit bull mix dogs she is caring for were. And they went after her.
"Mom's doing poorly," said Dr. Andrew Alexander, a physician and professor in Southern California. Her prognosis, he says, is not good.
"We know she'll lose a leg," Alexander. "It looks like she'll lose an arm. We're not sure she's going to make it out of here alive."
Pictures show the blood-soaked scene inside the house.
"I've been doing this job for more than six years, I have never seen anything like it," said Iris Johnson, Thurston County Animal Services. "It appeared that she was drug into the house about 10 feet."
The Thurston County Sheriff's investigators say the homeowner was running errands and returned home to find the dogs attacking Alexander.
She stopped the attack.
Nevertheless, investigators say neither she nor the dogs, one of them a pregnant female, committed a crime.
"This is not a criminal case," said Sgt. Tim Rudloff. "We're not investigating it as a crime, as tragic as it is. The dogs were contained on the property that they're supposed to be contained at."
Andrew Alexander says what the dogs did to his mother is a crime.
"This sort of violent act on someone to this degree," he said. "I'm not convinced that there's no crime been happening."
The homeowner has agreed to have her dog euthanized.
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But the other three dogs belong to her daughter, who is incarcerated.
So she needs her consent to have them put down.
Animal control says it received a handful of telephone complaints about the dogs chasing people around the neighborhood.
But the complaints were never formally filed so no action was taken.
According to the sheriff's office, the woman was attacked by one adult male pit bull/lab mix, one adult-female pit bull/healer mix and two juvenile mixed-breed pit bulls.