Without Any Warning, Man Is Mauled by Two Pit Bulls

Without barking, without snarling, the dogs were on George Willoughby before he had a chance to turn around. Two muscular pit bulls clamped their jaws around his legs, ripped at his knees and bit his face.

Bloodied and terrified, he pulled himself on top of a car. One followed him up. Willoughby sprung from the roof, stumbled back onto the street and made it to his delivery truck. He battered the dogs off his legs one last time before slamming the door behind him.

Willoughby, 50, was left shaken and bloodied by the predawn attack Wednesday in the mid-Wilshire section of Los Angeles. He was released from Midway Hospital after being bandaged and cleaned.

“If I wasn’t a strong man,” he said, “they would have killed me.”

Removed to a shelter run by Los Angeles Animal Control officers, the two trap-jawed pit bulls face an administrative hearing to determine whether they should be destroyed, Animal Control Lt. Ted Berquist said. A third pit bull from the same house was also taken away.

The attack occurred just after 4 a.m. in the 1600 block of South Wilton Place, a working-class neighborhood of worn, century-old homes just north of the Santa Monica Freeway. The people who live there say they have come to rely on watchdogs to protect their homes from the crack dealers who regularly loiter on their corners and race through their back yards at night to elude police.

Terrifying Aspect

Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the attack on Willoughby was that, in this city, it was a rather ordinary event. Authorities estimate that there are 8,000 dog-bite reports a year in Los Angeles. As guard dogs proliferate in crime-wary neighborhoods, it seems unavoidable, as Berquist said, that some will “get loose from time to time.” Such was Willoughby’s bad luck.

Rosalio Encisco, who owns the pit bulls, blamed anonymous drug dealers for opening a gate in his yard before dawn, allowing the dogs to run free. “Somebody opened the gate,” Encisco said as he and family members argued their case on the street to a city animal control officer.

But neighbors reported that Encisco’s pit bulls have run loose before, as do many of the neighborhood dogs. When animal control officers showed up at the scene Wednesday, they not only captured the two pit bulls that attacked Willoughby, but also Encisco’s third pit bull and two neighborhood Doberman pinschers. According to Berquist, the officers released the Dobermans, which reportedly only viewed the attack, but temporarily held onto the third pit bull.

One resident, Bill Doyal, said he telephoned the city last year after two of Encisco’s dogs chased a cat into his yard and then turned on Doyal.

“I barely got up the stairs and into the house,” Doyal said. “They came up barking and teeth chomping like you’ve never seen.”

The Encisco family countered that their dogs usually keep to the yard. “We let them sleep back there at night,” said Maria Encisco, Rosalio Encisco’s daughter. “We have had strange men in our yard. That’s why we keep the dogs back there. To protect ourselves.”

Doyal and other neighbors tell tales of cats “ripped up like old furniture” by the neighborhood dogs. Doyal’s own cat, he said, was “torn up bad” by a recent attack.

Carcass of Dog

Out in the street, lying just yards from Doyal’s house, was the stiff carcass of a white dog. It had been there since the sun rose, neighbors said, but none of them recognized it or had any idea of how it may have died.

The neighborhood is a community of sprawling clapboard houses that appear sturdy from a distance, but worn and weathered closer up. Next to the Encisco home is a sagging plank house that operates as a day care center. While the Enciscos talked with the animal control officer in front of their home, more than a dozen children played next door, squealing and pedaling about on tricycles and toy cars.

The day care center has its own dogs, neighbors said--the two Doberman pinschers that ran loose Wednesday morning and hung back while the pit bulls attacked.

Willoughby, who regularly visits a girlfriend on the street, said he had never noticed the dogs before. “They’ll bark and all, but I’ve never seen them loose like that,” said the medical supply driver.

In the darkness, Willoughby said, he had left his friend’s apartment and was approaching his medical supply truck parked across Wilton when “something hit me from behind,” knocking him forward.

For an instant he thought it was a robber. But as he pivoted, “I saw I was facing a pit bull. It was ferocious.” He tried to ward it off with one hand, but a second dog lunged at his other arm “and pulled me down.”

Luckily, Willoughby said, the dog’s spring-like jaws had come down on his wristwatch. The dog snapped the metal band in two, but Willoughby was able to break free from the dog’s grip. He clambered atop a Chevy Monte Carlo, streaking the hood and the street below with his blood.

Called Dispatcher

When the dogs followed, he took off for his delivery truck, parked nearby. Once inside, Willoughby used a two-way radio to call a dispatcher at his office for help from paramedics and police.

Paramedics arrived first. According to Berquist, they at first refused to leave their ambulance until the dogs, still circling Willoughby’s truck, were contained. Finally, the ambulance backed up to Willoughby’s door and paramedics used their rear doors as shields to let Willoughby safely into the ambulance for emergency treatment.

“I could barely walk,” said Willoughby, who was still maneuvering with a pronounced limp.

The dogs were corralled by the Enciscos, who claim that they heard the pit bulls barking but assumed that the animals were after intruders. Berquist said the Enciscos face no criminal charges but added that the office probably will seek to destroy the two attack dogs.

The Enciscos said they are worried what will happen to their dogs, named Killer, Madonna and Cassy.