FORT WAYNE – While Maurice Eley was dealing with his broken-down Jeep on Warsaw Street, he saw a pair of loose dogs send schoolchildren running Wednesday afternoon.
When the dogs, a pit bull and what appeared to be a pit bull-beagle mix, caught up with a boy and attacked him in a nearby open lot, Eley came to his aid.
“I was just doing a good deed,” the 50-year-old said.
Along with the boy, authorities said, the dogs bit Eley and a woman, sending all of them to Parkview Hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.
Eley said that when he came upon the boy in the grassy lot, the dogs were fiercely biting into the boy’s legs. Armed with a broken bottle, Eley got the animals off the boy.
Eley threw the bottle away, but the dogs came back and went after him. He slipped, and the dogs bit his legs until he kicked them off and got up. He managed to hold down both dogs by the neck until a police officer arrived.
The officer shot and killed one dog in the open lot in the 400 block of Wiebke Street. The other dog was shot in the same lot and ran away, but it was later found nearby and shot dead, said Belinda Lewis, director of Fort Wayne Animal Care & Control.
“If it wasn’t for him, I probably would have been in really, really bad shape,” Eley said of the officer who saved him. “He pulled up just in time.”
Lewis described Eley as the “hero of the day.” He suffered bites on his legs and right arm.
Before the dogs attacked Eley and the boy, who was about 11 or 12, they bit a 78-year-old woman outside Thomas Brownlee & Sons Market, 613 Oxford St. A cashier, who asked not to be named, said the woman had just finished shopping in the store with her daughter. The cashier said the woman’s daughter fought off the dogs.
“She was bit pretty bad,” the cashier said.
Lewis said the dogs went after the woman, who was sitting on a bench, with “no provocation” about 3 p.m. she said the animals will be tested for rabies.
There were reports of a fourth dog-bite victim, but authorities did not come across that person.
Lewis said officials were canvassing the neighborhood looking for the owner or owners of the brown and white male dogs. One dog had a collar but neither had any identification, she said.
Anyone who knows who owns the dogs is asked to call Animal Care & Control at 427-1244, ext. 1. Lewis said the owner or owners could face charges.
