NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – New Orleans police say the dogs who broke out of a man’s Little Woods backyard and killed an 81-year-old woman earlier this month also escaped from their enclosure last year, injuring a teen girl, according to court records.
The dogs’ owner — 36-year-old Chad Bridges — was booked last week on a count of negligent homicide in connection with the March 20 death of Barbara Stewart.
According to court documents, NOPD officers said Stewart was found near her recycling bin in front of her home in the 10200 block of Brookfield Drive in Little Woods at about 9 a.m.
A portion of the wooden fence between Bridges’ and Stewart’s homes was broken, which police say appeared to be older damage, since someone had nailed a loose piece of plywood in an attempt to mend it. The makeshift barrier did not prevent the dogs breaking through and attacking Stewart, the arrest warrant affidavit said.
The coroner’s office said Stewart died from the dog attack, which was described as “brutal and savage in nature.”
Another neighbor told police that she previously had problems with Bridges’ dogs trying to get into her yard. She said one of Bridges’ pit bull mixes dug under the fence and attacked her 15-year-old daughter last October. The neighbor said her daughter only escaped because she was able to jump onto a trampoline out of the dog’s reach.
The neighbor told police that Bridges took no steps to prevent future escapes or attacks. Detectives wrote that the neighbor reinforced her own side of the fence in an attempt to stop Bridges’ dogs from getting into her yard.
See a spelling or grammar error in our story? Click Here to report it. Please include the headline.
Subscribe to the Fox 8 YouTube channel.
Copyright 2025 WVUE. All rights reserved.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
