Dog lover pained by vicious bites, but also possible fate of biter

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

The bites Shelley Banks, 25, suffered Tuesday afternoon when a stray dog chased her up the outside stairs of her brother’s home on Porter Street and attacked her have left her in a great deal of pain.

She suffered torn ligaments, several rounds of rabies shots and surgery to clean out the wounds.

But the pain of what is likely to happen to the dog who bit her is equally bad, her mother, Lisa Banks, said.

“She was crying at the hospital, ‘They’re going to kill the dog,’” Lisa said. “We have two chihuahuas. She’s a dog lover and a cat lover.” She doesn’t want it killed.”

Lisa said Shelley asked John Onatz, the Warren animal control officer where he took the dog, but Onatz wouldn’t say.

“She wants to put the dog someplace to have it rehabilitated,” Lisa said.

Onatz said the amount of blood and the screaming coming from Shelley Banks when he arrived at the house shortly after the incident occurred was among the worst dog-bite calls he has answered in his 32 years on the job.

The dog was taken to the Trumbull County Dog Pound in Howland.

“I hope they never adopt that dog out,” Onatz said of the pooch, which he estimated weighs about 40 pounds.

Lisa said Shelley was climbing the stairs to her brother’s home when the dog appeared from the backyard and raced toward Shelley, up the stairs after her.

“I said, ‘Shelley, Go!’”

Shelley got inside the apartment, but the dog pushed the door open and attacked.

“It went for her right foot, clamped down on it,” Onatz said.

Lisa said her son also got bit in the face and wrist while trying to pull the dog off of his sister, but his injuries were minor.

When Onatz got there, “She’s bleeding, and I mean bleeding,” he said.

Shelley was wearing boots that provided very little resistance to the dog’s teeth, Lisa said.

“It bit through the boots like nothing you’ve ever seen,” Onatz said. “It went through the boot like an ice pick would go through, and it repeatedly bit her.”

The dog was still in the house when Onatz arrived, and Shelley was outside in a car.

A young woman who felt comfortable with the dog put it on a leash and brought it out from the apartment after ambulance workers took Shelley to the hospital.

Onatz and Lisa Banks say they don’t know where the dog came from or who owns it. Banks said she’d only seen it in the neighborhood one time before – last summer.

Lisa said her daughter suffered torn ligaments in her foot, received rabies shots, had surgery to clean out the injuries and received stitches.

She has to return for additional rabies shots on Tuesday and Jan. 31, and she can’t put any weight on her foot, so she is using a walker and crutches when she needs to move around.