ELKMONT, Ala. (WAFF) – An Elkmont man is hospitalized after three dogs brutally attacked him. An afternoon jog down Holt Road in Elkmont is part of 37-year-old Michael Haney’s daily routine.
“He gets out, he likes to jog and get in good shape, he’s going to college, he’s working, he’s really doing good. Good kid,” family friend Larry Nichols said.
His family says he’s working on his doctorate and jogs nearly 10 miles every day after going to work at a troubled youth facility in Elkmont. But it was Wednesday’s jog that would send him to Huntsville Hospital.
“Dogs were dragging a man across the road just dragging him by his shoulders and his neck and his head and dragging him,” Alan Smith, a witness said. “Almost looked like he was unconscious just because he was limp.”
Smith spotted the attack by what he says were two pit bulls and a cane corso that each weighed close to 200 lbs.
“I’ve never seen anything like that, I didn’t know a dog could do that to somebody,” Smith said
Haney spent all of Thursday undergoing multiple surgeries to his head, shoulders and arms.
Smith and a group of bystanders tried to do everything they could to stop the attack. Even hitting the dogs with shovels and crowbars.
“If he covered his face with his arm, they’d pull his arm away,” Smith said. “It didn’t phase them. Whenever we would hit the dogs they would keep going at him, or they would come back at us and try to get us. They were biting the metal ends of the shovel and the crowbar.”
Smith said the owner stood by panicking, trying to pull her dogs away but they wouldn’t budge. Eventually, she grabbed a gun, asking the strangers to shoot them, but the damage was already done.
“I could see from his knee to his ankle everything inside,” Smith said. “I mean his thighs were just eaten to pieces.”
Smith said helping wasn’t even a choice for him.
“It felt like the right thing to do, The Lord lays things on your heart and that’s the thing you need to do,” Smith said.
Haney’s family has started a GoFundMe to help support Michael.
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