March 29, 2024
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Chief, tot attacked by dogs

EASTPORT – A man swinging a rake was able to fend off two dogs -described as Lab and pit bull mixes – from biting a toddler who was walking with her grandfather.

The same dogs then turned on the city’s police chief and tried to attack him, but two blasts in the face with pepper spray convinced them to run away.

Around 12:15 p.m. Friday police were notified that two dogs tried to bite a youngster who was walking with her grandfather in the vicinity of the Todd House Bed and Breakfast on Capen Avenue and Water Street.

“The dogs came running up to [the grandfather],” Police Chief Matt Vinson said Saturday. “He grabbed his granddaughter and picked her up. He grabbed a rock. A guy who lives next door saw what was happening and came out running with a rake and started swinging it. The dogs were bearing down on the man, hair raised, growling, their teeth bared.”

The dogs ran away and the chief, who had gone to the scene, pursued them on foot. “They saw me and they turned on me,” the chief said. “I backed off back down to Water Street and the dogs kept coming,” he said. The dogs began to circle him.

Vinson said he had learned that if you stomp your foot at a dog, often it will back off. “Well, I stomped my foot and one dog came right after my foot,” he said.

“It was scary,” City Clerk Helen Archer said Sunday. She had the day off and was driving on Water Street when she saw the dogs stalking the chief.

“He was in the middle of the street and those dogs were coming right at him. They had their teeth showing and the barking and the growling. I had to stop in the middle of the street or I’d have run him over. I probably should have run the dogs over; I never thought of that. I thought ‘Oh, my God.’ He was backing away from them, of course. … He pulled out his pepper spray and he hit them with his pepper spray. It didn’t even faze them. They kept coming right at him. He hit them again, and the second time he sprayed them, they backed off and ran back to their yard. They were vicious-looking.”

Police Officer Mike Emery, the Pleasant Point Police Department, the Eastport Fire Department and the city’s animal control officer began a search for the dogs. “We knew we had to find those dogs,” the chief said.

Vinson said that while searching Water Street he noticed a gate ajar. “We knocked on the door. The dogs [who were now in the house] were literally trying to bite through the door to get to us,” the chief said.

Although they kept on knocking, the owner did not answer.

Vinson decided to call the Washington County district attorney in Calais to ask what legal recourse they had.

He said when they returned to the house and knocked again, a woman answered. She told them that the dogs belonged to her father-in-law. Vinson said the owner had two options – confine the dogs or transport them to a kennel.

“The only way they can come out of the house is muzzled and leashed. Or the owners can transport them to a confinement place, like a kennel, at their own expense. After some discussion, we agreed there was no place around here where the dogs could be taken,” he said.

Vinson returned to the residence on Saturday to speak with the dogs’ owner. Vinson declined to identify the man because he had agreed to cooperate with police. He said no one would be charged.

“He understood what had happened. He said, ‘You’re not going to have any problem with the dogs any more, I already have an appointment with the vet to have them euthanized,'” the chief said. “They have one week to bring me certification that the dogs have been euthanized.”


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