A woman was shot in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood Friday night after burglarizing an apartment and releasing three pit bulls who attacked two building residents, the Seattle Police Department announced Saturday.
According to police, around 10:30 p.m., officers were called to an apartment building in the 1000 block of University Street to investigate an animal bite. Police said the victim, a woman named Kendall Anderton, reported that she heard dogs barking downstairs, so she went to make sure it wasn’t a friend’s dog who lives on a lower level of the building.
When she got off the elevator, she was attacked by three pit bulls and bitten on her arm.
“I did the best I could,” Anderton said. “As a dog lover, hurting an animal doesn’t come easy. So I did my best just to try and kick them off me and get myself in that elevator and get that door closed as quickly as it could.”
She says what is even harder to process is the fact she, too, owns a pit bull named Charlie.
“And as someone who owns a pit bull and loves that breed, it was just so sad to see those dogs like that,” Anderton said.
When officers arrived, the dogs were back in their apartment. Officers went to the unit and tried speaking to the owner but got no answer.
While police were at the apartment complex, the building manager called 911 to have officers contact a woman who was a long-term guest in the unit next to the dogs’ apartment. The building manager told police that the woman had constantly caused disturbances and had been seen regularly trying other units’ door handles.
Officers tried to speak to that woman at the unit but got no answer there, either.
Officers left the complex but were on their way back within minutes after reports that a woman had been shot.
When officers arrived, they found a 37-year-old woman with a gunshot wound near her collarbone. Officers provided first aid before Seattle Fire Department medics transported her to Harborview Medical Center.
The building manager, a 50-year-old man, was one of the callers who reported the shooting. He told officers that after police left the apartment complex, the dogs were soon out in the building’s courtyard again.
The manager tried to go talk to the dogs’ owner, but he, too, was attacked by the dogs. Eventually, he was able to get the dogs out of the courtyard and onto the street, locking them out as he closed the door behind them.
The long-term guest who the manager called police about earlier was also in the courtyard, and she asked the manager to let the dogs back in. He refused, so she went outside the courtyard with the dogs.
The manager went back to his unit but soon heard screaming from outside. A couple who had been walking their small dog were holding it as the pit bulls jumped up and tried to attack it.
The manager got a gun from his apartment, went outside and fired a warning shot in the air. The dogs didn’t stop, so he fired two more shots toward the dogs.
One round struck the 37-year-old woman who accompanied the dogs outside the courtyard.
Police seized the gun as evidence, and Seattle Fire personnel treated the building manager’s dog bite injuries. Police arrested him for reckless endangerment and later released him from the East Precinct.
Later at the scene, police interviewed the dog owner, who had returned after receiving a text from the building manager that his dogs were loose.
Police said the man showed them the three crates he keeps the dogs in when he leaves, and he said it was not possible for them to escape their crates or the apartment without being let out by a person.
The dog owner suspected that the 37-year-old woman staying in the apartment next door let the dogs out because she had tried his apartment door handle in the past and likes to play with the dogs when he takes them out.
The man also told police that several expensive pairs of shoes and several hundred dollars in cash were missing from the apartment.
Police interviewed the 37-year-old woman at Harborview Medical Center, where she told police that she had entered the man’s apartment to let the dogs out and had stolen several items.
Police said they plan to arrest the woman for residential burglary once she is released from the hospital.
Anderton said she plans to move out of the apartment as soon as she can.
“Get out of my lease here and maybe even get out of the city,” she said.
But she hopes the dogs who attacked her find a better home.
“I hope that those dogs can get into a better situation with people that are better equipped to take care of dogs,” Anderton said.