By JOSEPH KELLARD
Ilanit Alon was walking her wheaten terrier, Murphy, on Bayfield Boulevard in Oceanside on July 13 when, she said, a pit bull came up behind them and attacked her dog, police reported. She said she feared for both of their lives.
The pit bull was euthanized on Monday.
The dog, which had no leash and was trailed by a young boy, approached Alon and Murphy, growled, bit Murphy and clamped down on the terrier's chest, Alon said. She attempted to pry the pit bull's jaws off her dog, but was bitten on the hand. Then she tried to pull the powerful dog off Murphy by its collar, but it broke. Realizing there was nothing more she or the shocked young boy could do, Alon cried out for help. "I just started screaming bloody murder, 'Somebody help me!'" Alon recounted. "The dog wasn't going to stop until my dog was a rag doll."
A "brave and confident" male neighbor came running to her rescue, Alon said, first grabbing the dog by its throat, then pulling its hind legs to throw it off balance and off Alon's terrier. "He really seemed to know what he was doing," she said. Attempts to reach the unidentified neighbor were not successful.
Alon noticed a woman outside her house watching the incident, and ran toward her with Murphy, pleading for refuge in her home. The woman obliged. Leaving her shoes and Murphy's leash behind in the street, Alon ran with the terrier up the woman's stoop, but the pit bull eluded the man and ran up the steps after them. Alon managed to kick the dog aside and closed the door behind her and Murphy, who ran to a bedroom to hide.
Murphy had chunks of flesh ripped from her shoulder and chest, and Alon had bites on her torso and finger and a bruised toe, she said. While Alon went to South Nassau Communities Hospital for a tetanus shot and antibiotics, Murphy visited a veterinarian to undergo more than two hours of surgery to get stitched up.
Alon believes that if not for the man who came to her rescue, Murphy and even she might have been mauled to death. "I was hysterical," she said. "I really didn't feel any different than if I had been attacked by a man with a knife. It was almost worse, in that with an animal there's no trying to rationalize with it."
Alon and her husband, Jeff, called police, who notified the animal control unit of the Town of Hempstead, which met police at the scene. The owner of the pit bull, Michael Levitt of Woodward Street in Oceanside (whose 8-year-old son was the boy following the dog), took the dog to the town animal shelter, where it was held for a 10-day evaluation, said Lt. Larry Feffer of the Fourth Precinct. The town obtained a court order to hold the dog, and set a court date to deal with the attack as well as a previous one. Two weeks prior to the incident with Alon and Murphy, the pit bull attacked another dog in the neighborhood, police said. The victim was out on a leash in its front yard when the pit bull got loose from its house and attacked it.
Levitt avoided a court case by signing an order on July 19 to have his dog put down on July 25. He did not respond to requests for comment.
Alon said last week that even with the knowledge that the pit bull was to be destroyed, she was still too shaken by the attack to take her dog out for walks. Meanwhile, she has researched state and local laws pertaining to animal control. She mentioned the Dangerous Dog Act, which was of help to her in the case. "This law really helped us to have support to prosecute to have the dog put down," she said.
Now Alon said she is trying to get the law expanded by lobbying for provisions requiring dog breeds with aggressive temperaments, such as pit bulls, to be muzzled when taken for walks in public, and that no child under a certain age should be permitted to walk these dogs.
"The town code follows the New York State Agriculture and Markets Law, which contains no specifics about muzzling dogs of a certain breed or age requirements to walk them," said town spokeswoman Susan Trenkel. Trenkel explained that the town takes an average of 20 dogs a year from owners throughout the township, and that the decision to destroy the dog is made by a judge in each case.
"I think it's important to get these laws passed here to prevent these kind of attacks," Alon said. "What happened to me is really kind of minor compared to some of the maulings you read or hear about. ... So I'm going to look to see if we can put something like those kind of laws in place."
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