It was a horrifying scene for a 58-year-old woman as she was dragged up and down a suburban Harvey street while being mauled by a pair of dogs.
Donna Hale says her life will never be the same after most of her foot was amputated following the April attack, which left her to undergo seven painful surgeries in its aftermath.
Hale was attacked on the evening of April 14 while she was walking home from visiting a friend’s house.
Near the intersection of 145th Street and Sangamon on the fateful night, she felt something touch her.
“I turned around and saw two dogs,” she said. “I fell backwards, and that’s when they attacked me. One grabbed my leg, one grabbed my shoulder, and they just started mauling me.”
Hale weighs 125 pounds, but says the powerful dogs were able to drag her up and down the street for at least 15 minutes, with no one hearing her cries for help.
“They were pulling me from both ends,” she said. “All I could think is ‘I’m getting mauled by these dogs. Is this really happening?’”
She said that eventually two vehicles pulled up to the scene.
“He saw me, saw them mauling me and he flashed his lights and blew his horn, but they never stopped,” she said.
It was at that moment that one of the witnesses pulled out a gun and shot one of the dogs.
“I heard ‘arf,’ and they both ran away,” she said.
Another driver called 911 to summon help.
“I held my head up and was like ‘please don’t leave.’ She said ‘baby, I’m not going to leave you. I’m calling the ambulance,’” Hale said. “I’m glad I never lost consciousness.”
Hale said she had never seen the dogs before, but one was wearing a collar. A police report indicates the dogs were rottweilers, with one weighing at least 80 pounds.
When she was brought to a hospital, the physicians were forced to break bad news to her.
“The doctor is like ‘I’m going to need your permission to amputate your foot,’ and I said yes,” she said.
Ultimately Hale spent more than a month in different hospitals, undergoing her seventh surgery just this week.
“All the bites and the road rash, it was awful,” she said.
The treatment for her injuries wasn’t the only obstacle she said she had to overcome. She said that when detectives finally came to talk to her, she felt like she was being blamed for the attack.
“They tried to make it seem like I did something wrong, or was a reason for what had happened,” she said.
“I marched to the mayor’s office after the detective started to victim blame,” her sister Cheryl Hunt added. “He said ‘Harvey’s a dangerous place….why is your sister walking down the streets of Harvey?’”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Harvey said that they are “aware of the allegations regarding the nature of the questions asked during the investigation,” and that they are reviewing how the case was handled.
According to the Cook County Department of Animal and Rabies Control, officers responded shortly after the attack. They located the dog that had been shot during the incident, and it was taken to a facility to be euthanized and tested for rabies.
The second dog was not located after a search.
As part of the response to the attack, increased emphasis on addressing animal control concerns in Harvey will include training two officers in ARC policies, which will be done at no cost to the suburban community.
For now, Hale said that she is facing a new reality and that she’ll continue to move forward with her recovery.
“All my toes are gone. They are not going to grow back,” she said. “I have to learn a new normal.”
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