5 pit bulls attack family. Sanford cop kills them

Sanford police Sgt. Nigel Price heard screams when he got to Stonebrook apartments on Tuesday.

Dogs in a third-floor apartment were killing a woman, witnesses screamed. He broke into a run and raced past several people who were injured and bleeding.

"I could hear what sounded like several dogs attacking something," he wrote in a police report. "I could see a large amount of blood on the ground, leading into the apartment and on the door of the apartment."

Price unholstered his gun and spotted five pit bulls attacking a person — he initially couldn't tell whether it was a man or woman — on the floor in a hallway.

The victim was sitting while one dog bit her arms, legs and upper body, he wrote.

He fired his gun, hoping it would stop the attack. It didn't.

A dog then charged him, he wrote, so he aimed his gun at that animal and pulled the trigger.

He then began firing at the other dogs.

When he was done, five dogs were dead, and the victim in the hallway was unconscious and unresponsive, according to a police incident report.

Price would not talk to reporters Wednesday about what happened in the two-bedroom apartment near Airport Boulevard.

Other officers Wednesday were trying to sort out who owned the dogs — described as pets — and what set them off.

They injured all five people who lived in the apartment, the woman in the hallway the most severely, according to police.

Sanford police spokeswoman Bianca Gillett described those injuries as life-threatening. The woman was flown by helicopter to Orlando Regional Medical Center.

Two others were under treatment at Central Florida Regional Hospital. Their conditions were unknown. A fourth — a boy — suffered only minor injuries that did not require hospital care, Gillett said.

He and one other victim were children. They were turned over to an aunt, according to an incident report.

Police did not release their names.

One of the victims, a 31-year-old woman, was sitting on a top step when Officer Sean Hill arrived, he wrote in his report. She had open wounds on her arms and legs, and he tried to stop the bleeding from her right arm, where she was most badly injured, he wrote.

She was injured last month at a home three miles away in a similar incident, according to a separate Sanford police report.

Four pit bulls bit her and a 26-year-old woman, sending them to the hospital by ambulance or rescue vehicle, according to a Sanford police incident report. A different police officer, Evan Cramer, confronted one of the dogs and used chemical spray to subdue it, he wrote in his report.

It's not clear whether they were the same dogs, Gillett said. The animals in the December attack were quarantined at a shelter by Seminole County Animal Services, according to director Bob Hunter, then returned to their owner, Sean Pitts, 33, of Winter Springs.

'These are pets'

In Tuesday's attack, Price got to the scene about 3:20 p.m. A caller had phoned 911, saying a woman was screaming for help.

"As far as we know the dogs were staying there," Gillette said. "We just don't know who claims to be the owner."

There is no evidence, she said, that the dogs were trained to fight or attack.

"As far as we know, these are pets," she said.

One dog survived, a small black and white pit bull that was in a crate and, according to early reports, was not involved in the attack.

County animal services employees led it down the stairs Tuesday night, loaded it into a truck and hauled it away.

Officials later quarantined it, concluding it may have been involved, according to records at animal services.

In an email Hunter wrote that his agency has no record of call-outs to the address where the attack happened and isn't sure who the owner is.

rstutzman@tribpub.com or 407-650-6394