Date: December 25, 2007
Location: Yermo, California
Victim: adult female
Breeds: Mixed breeds (originally id'd as pit bulls, then pit bull types, then breed is not mentioned)
Circumstances:
Four dogs running loose, attacked woman. Owner of dogs has had
complaints made against him for other dogs in the past. Two dogs shot,
other two confiscated.
Link: http://www.desertdispatch.com/news/caldwell_2268___article.html/dogs_people.html
YERMO — For the family of Kelly Caldwell, the events of Christmas evening don’t make sense.
Her daughter, Rhonda Dugger, who lived with Caldwell in Yermo and spent
Christmas morning with her mother, does not understand why Caldwell was
walking alone near the intersection of Yermo Road and Second Street the
night several dogs attacked and killed her. She does not understand
what happened to her mother that night.
“It was horrible,
absolutely horrible. She was gone when I got there. I never saw her
take another breath,” Dugger said of her mother. “She didn’t know that
side of Yermo. She never ventured over that way. She never went out
alone.”
Despite a medical condition that left Caldwell with
weak lungs and forced her to always walk with a companion, her sister,
Theresa Davies, said Caldwell was a tough woman who had a bit of rough
side. Both Davies and Dugger said sometimes Caldwell rubbed people the
wrong way and she had enemies in Yermo but both still loved her.
“I love my sister. I love my sister to death, but a lot of people didn’t like her,” Davies said.
Both
Dugger and Davies said Caldwell’s body was badly damaged by the attack.
Dugger said it looked like Caldwell’s legs had been run over by a car.
Pieces of her body were scattered around the scene. Davies, who saw her
sister in the emergency room, said she had skin nowhere else on her
body but her face.
“I can’t fathom it. I can’t believe an
animal could do that,” she said, “but I saw her in the emergency room,
and they did do that to her.”
The owners of the four dogs
suspected in the attack — two of which were shot and two held as
evidence — said the dogs had never been violent to other people.
However, Dugger and Davies have heard from other people that those dogs
have attacked people in the past. Sgt. Rob Ciolli said detectives have
also talked to people in the area about violence by the dogs.
According
to records from San Bernardino County Animal Care and Control, reports
about vicious dogs and bites have been made against the location, but
not against the dogs suspected in the attack, John Papp, a supervisor
of field services for the county, said.
Amid the investigation and
questioning about what happened that Tuesday night, the community has
decided to hold a candlelight vigil for Caldwell at dusk on Saturday
evening at the corner of Second Street and Yermo Road, where the attack
occurred.
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