Woman charged after rottweilers attack girl
A 10-year-old girl in Dundee survived an “absolutely horrendous” attack by two rottweilers when her grandmother came to her rescue. The dogs’ owner has been charged. Carl Dinnen reports.
Rhianna Kidd is being treated in hospital after her jaw was broken and she was badly bitten. Her injuries could have been far worse if her grandmother had not intervened to save her when the rottweilers attacked.
Ten-year-old Rhianna has had three hours of surgery, she has had pins put in her jaw and has been treated for bite wounds to her arms and legs – yet in some ways she was lucky.
Because as she cycled back from the shops yesterday, her grandmother Irene Grady was watching from her house just over the road.
She said: “The next minute there were three of them round her…I thought to myself – I don’t like the look of this. So I shouted out of the window, and said, ‘keep peddling your bike Rhianna.'”
The dogs then attacked her granddaughter, as Ms Grady ran across the road to her aid. She picked up Rhianna, hoping the dogs would think the child was gone.
Ms Grady said the rottweilers followed the pair home, “snarling”. She called 999 when they were safely inside the house.
“Absolutely horrendous,” she said. “Something needs to be done about these dogs. It was like a brute, a fighting machine.”
Channel 4 News reporter Carl Dinnen said the attack was not unprecedented.
“Rottweilers have been involved serious attacks on children before,” he said.
“In 2007, one-year-old Archie Lee Hirst was killed by his family’s pet rottweiler in Wakefield. In 1991,11-year-old Kelly Lynch was killed by two rottweilers in Argyll.”
It’s expected the animals involved in yesterday’s attack will be destroyed. A 33-year-old woman has been charged under the Dangerous Dogs Act for failing to keep them under control.