Dallas County woman thankful to be alive after dog attack; owner faces felony

By Amelia Mugavero

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    DALLAS COUNTY, Texas (KTVT) — A Dallas County woman says she nearly lost her life in a dog attack in late April.

Sixty-year-old Kathy Dunn says she still has countless cuts and bruises that remind her of the attack on April 19, when 8 dogs viciously attacked her outside her home in Sand Branch, an unincorporated part of Dallas County near Seagoville.

“They really tried to kill me! I thought I was going to die,” says Dunn. “I could feel the bites more in my neck and in my head and in my arms and in my legs. I just tried to cover my face and roll in sand.”

Dunn says the unleashed dogs attacked her after her neighbor released the pack of dogs outside his gate.

“Maybe 3 to 5 minutes they were attacked in me. Maybe longer than that. I’m a believer he let the dogs out on me,” Dunn said.

Dunn was rushed to the emergency room, with bites all over her body, and had to have more than a hundred stretches and staples. Since the attack, Dunn has been recovering at the trauma center at Baylor University Medical Center – Dallas campus, where she has already had three surgeries, and will soon need a fourth to repair the skin on her leg.

This week, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office arrested Dunn’s neighbor Ricki Harris on a 3rd degree felony charge for the dog attack causing bodily injury.

CBS News Texas spoke to Harris after the attack. He denied owning the dogs.

“I cared for them, and I boarded them, but they weren’t my dogs,” Harris says.

There were several other unleashed dogs on his property.

The SPCA of Texas said have euthanized the eight dogs.

Dunn claims Harris had nearly 30 dogs on his property, and there have been several other dog attacks around the area. Dunn is hoping her story leads to stronger enforcement for unleashed dogs in Dallas County.

“They need to put them on leashes and if they don’t, write them up or something, or write them a ticket or something,” Dunn adds, “Because you never know. You’re here one day and the next… You never know.”

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