Girl, 10, was killed trying to help dog

01/14/2007
Michelle Mondo
Express-New

Just like she had done many times before, 10-year-old Amber Jones was in her backyard practicing her cheerleading moves. She wanted to come up with something new and different to help her make one of the All-Stars teams at the Texas Wolverine All-Stars gym.

And just like her neighbor's dog had done many times before, in an attempt to jump over the fence, it got its collar caught on the chain link.

Amber asked her mom, Lori, if she could help the dog. Her mother said yes just like before.

But on Friday afternoon something happened unlike any other time, the family said. The dog attacked Amber.

Lori Jones heard her daughter's screams. She ran into the backyard and saw the pit bull on top of her daughter. It had bitten Amber in the stomach and was now attached to her neck. Frantic, Amber's mother tried to push the dog off. A man rushed to help and added the needed strength to get the dog away from both mother and daughter.

The family does not know the man but said if he had not been there the dog could have attacked Lori Jones as well.

As they waited for the ambulance Lori Jones held her hands over the wounds in her daughter's neck and stomach. The dog continued to hover. Amber's father, Robert, drove from his job at the Hilton Palacio del Rio downtown to University Hospital, where Amber was airlifted.
Amber died just a couple hours later at about 6:30 p.m.

On the day after her death Amber's family sat in their home receiving calls, condolences and even a stuffed animal from one of Amber's schoolmates. Robert and Lori Jones, Amber's half-sister Megan Bloodworth, 17, and Amber's aunt Sharon Marsh tried to cope with the suddenness of the death.

"You just try to keep it together," Robert Jones said. "We're hanging together and trying to reason it out."

Amber's mother could not speak. She cried on her husband's shoulder.

Fatal attacks by pit bulls or other dogs are very rare in San Antonio, said Animal Cruelty Investigator Eddie Wright and police spokesman Joe Rios.

"Dog bites occur quite often but something of this nature happens few and far between," Rios said.

The last known killing was in 2005. In that attack, a 64-year-old man was killed, according to news reports.

The family wants Amber's death to be a lesson to others about the dangers of dogs. But, they said, they had no reason to think this dog, whose name they did not know, would ever attack their daughter.
"She was in the back just like she had been 100 times before," Megan said.

The dog is now in the custody of Animal Services and will likely be euthanized because it killed someone, Wright said. There will be a hearing during which the owners of the dog will have a chance to defend the animal. That hearing has to be held within 10 days of the incident, he said.

The owners of the dog did not want to comment nor were their names available from police records.

Wright was not sure if Animal Services previously had been called to the house on Astor Street.

Amber liked the pit bull, her father said. She often talked to it through the fence that separated the yards of the two homes — the Joneses on the 700 block of Topeka Boulevard and the dog's owner's on the 400 block of Astor Street.

Robert Jones said the family did come to their house to apologize for what happened.

The Jones family was conflicted about the dog and the owners of the pit bull. They would not immediately place blame but did say if the family was neglecting the dog they needed to take responsibility for its behavior. Amber, called A.J. by her family, was often the only person they saw interacting with the dog.

"He was always out there alone," Robert Jones said.

An Animal Services investigation into the incident is pending. But Rios said criminal charges against the owners appear unlikely. They would have to find "very gross negligence" on the part of the owners, he said, but the report indicates it was "just an unfortunate accident."

What makes this even sadder, Amber's family said, is that her love of animals attracted her to the pit bull in the first place. She knew how to act around dogs and did not approach them quickly or without care, Marsh said. Her best friend was her black and white dog Spot.

"She even wanted to be a veterinarian," her dad said.

**Note: Eddie Wright at the San Antonio health dept. said yes, this dog was chained and had little or no socialization other than the little girl it killed.