SPRINGDALE — A pit bull on Saturday attacked a mother and her two sons, sending all three people to an area hospital with injuries.
Kathryn Urban, 30, and her son Gage Sloop, 9, were being treated for cuts to the heads, arms and hands at Northwest Medical Center-Springdale.
Justin Urban, 5, the boy who was first attacked by the dog around 11:40 a.m. Saturday in the front yard of the Urban’s rental house on Fredonia Street, received only scratches.
“The dog had him pinned to the ground, face down,” said Kathryn Urban, who repeatedly struck the neighbor’s brown pit bull with a broom to get him off her youngest son. “I kept hitting him.”
Springdale Police spokesman Kevin Lewis didn’t return a telephone message left Saturday at his office and on his cell phone.
A police sergeant, who was unavailable to answer questions, did issue a report describing how three people were injured, saying police were contacted at 11:49 a.m. for a dog bite incident at Steuben Street and Backus Avenue, and indicating that a police officer shot and killed the dog as it charged toward “unprovoked” officers.
Police cited the dog’s owner, Pablo Jacinto, for harboring a vicious animal and allowing it to run at large. Police did not provide Jacinto’s age or home address.
“It’s an unsettling and disappointing thing,” said Brett Harris, the city’s animal services manager who did not assistant with Saturday’s incident. “The end result is ultimately the owner failed in some way. It could be a situation where it’s a great owner and a bad thing happened today. I don’t know.”
Kathryn Urban, whose injuries include two cuts to her right eyelid and a muscle damage in her right arm from the dog’s teeth, said Justin was playing outside when he was attacked. She ran outside to help.
As she hit the dog with the broom, the dog turned its attention to her, knocking her to the ground and going for her eye and biting her right arm.
“He was attacking me so Gage hit it with the broom,” Kathryn Urban said. “We all ended up on the ground.”
A third son Steven Sloop, 11, helped his mom and brothers into the house, kicking the dog one last time as he slammed the door shut.
Emergency room workers glued Gage’s scalp back together where the dog had bit him just above the hairline. The boy had scratches on his face.
The Springdale City Council in April passed a city law that made it unlawful to keep a “potentially dangerous animal” in the city without certain restrictions.
The ordinance requires owners pay a $100 fee to obtain a permit if the animal has shown previous signs of aggression.
Harris didn’t think the dog killed on Saturday previously had been reported as dangerous so Jacinto wouldn’t have been required to have the permit.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 18 on 11/14/2010