Pit bull attacks 2 adults in southern Springs

A pit bull attacked two adults in southern Colorado Springs on Saturday afternoon, sending one to the hospital with a punctured hand.

The attacks occurred about 2 p.m. in the 2100 block of South El Paso Avenue, near Meadows Park.

The mild temperatures Saturday had children on the sidewalks and in front yards throughout the neighborhood.

“I was scared,” said Sharon Duran, 41, of Houston who was visiting family here. “He tried to get my neck. I could feel him gnawing back there.”

Duran said a boy told her a dog was in the front yard, and she went out to get the brownand-white pit bull out of the yard. She pushed him out of the gate, but when she tried to close it, the dog forced it open and leapt on her, pushing her to the ground.

Duran pulled the hood of her yellow sweatshirt over her head and curled to a fetal position as the dog bit and scratched at her back as she rolled on the grass.

Robert Martinez, 43, ran out of the house with a baseball bat to try and get the dog off Duran, and Barbara Carmona, 45, used a broom.

“We chased it off her, but it was barking and jumping,” Carmona said.

She said a boy that apparently owned the dog kept calling “Chico,” but the dog paid no heed.

The pit bull then left the yard, continued down El Paso Avenue and jumped on and attacked Martinez’s brother, 26-year-old Rudy Hernandez, who was walking to the house where other family members had congregated.

Hernandez told his brother the dog bit his right hand, puncturing the skin, and he kicked it away. The dog kept running down El Paso Avenue.

Hernandez was treated at a hospital and released.

An animal control officer from the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region couldn’t find the dog as of late Saturday afternoon.

“We patrolled extensively for the dog,” said Leslie Yoder, operations director. “We will patrol regularly for at least 10 days to locate it for impound and quarantine.”

No owner could be located, Yoder said.

“There’s so many kids running around here,” Carmona said. “It could have been worse.”

“I thought she was dead,” Martinez said of Duran as he saw the dog go for her neck.

Duran showed the holes in her sweatshirt hood where the dog bit through.

“If I wouldn’t have had that hood, he would have got my neck,” she said.

Martinez said he had seen the dog being walked in the neighborhood previously but didn’t know who owned it. The dog was described as wearing a choke chain, but no collar. It was described as being about 30 to 40 pounds, and about 3 feet tall.

Humane Society officials have said more pit bulls are in Colorado Springs since Denver and Aurora banned them.

If anyone sees the pit bull, call the society at 473-1741.