8-Year-Old Girl Hurt When 4 Dogs Attack Children

A pack of four dogs, including at least two pit bulls, leaped a fence around their owner’s yard and swarmed into a group of schoolchildren in Lake Los Angeles on Friday, knocking an 8-year-old girl to the ground and repeatedly biting her, authorities reported.

The injured girl, Annette Stinebiser, was bitten on the shoulders, neck, back, hip and legs before the dogs were pulled away.

The girl was flown to a hospital for treatment and was home in good condition by Friday evening, but with more than 25 stitches closing her wounds, said her mother, Judith Stinebiser.

The dogs were impounded by Los Angeles County animal-control officers.

Annette was walking with five other children about her age when the attack occurred at 2:20 p.m. in the 16800 block of Mackennas Gold Avenue in Lake Los Angeles, 10 miles east of Palmdale in the Antelope Valley, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said.

The children had just gotten off a school bus and were walking to their homes or to a baby-sitter’s house when the dogs escaped from a nearby yard surrounded by a chain-link fence. Neighbors estimated the fence’s height at about 5 feet.

Back to the Dogs

Some of the children dropped their schoolbooks and ran as the barking dogs charged them. Annette, who lives a block away but was heading to a baby-sitter’s home just two houses from where the dogs lived, had her back to the dogs when they jumped her.

“I was closest to them and didn’t see them coming until they got me,” Annette said after returning home from the hospital.

“I didn’t jump back in time. My friend tried to pull me away, but they knocked me down and started biting on me. It hurt. It was scary.”

The third-grader’s baby-sitter, Mary Edgar, said she ran from her house after seeing the girl on the ground with one of the dogs biting her shoulder.

“I heard barking and screaming and thought, ‘Oh, great, another dogfight,’ ” Edgar said. “I looked out and saw my three boys running and the dog on Annette. I ran out there.”

Edgar said the dogs’ owner, whose name deputies refused to disclose and neighbors did not know, had pulled the dogs away from the girl.

The owner could not be reached for comment.

The injured girl was taken by helicopter to Antelope Valley Medical Center in Lancaster, where she was treated and released. Judith Stinebiser said her daughter “was really hurt.”

“It scared her too. It was an unprovoked attack.”

Deputy Cory Kennedy said animal-control officers have impounded the dogs while the incident is investigated. He said there was no preliminary indication that the owner was negligent.

‘Dogs Were in Pen’

“It looks like the dogs were in a pen and were able to get out,” he said.

A spokesman for the county’s Department of Animal Care and Control said two of the dogs were pit bulls and two were mixed-breed, possibly part pit bull.

Residents said the dogs have gotten loose in the neighborhood before and attacked at least three other dogs belonging to neighbors. Friday’s attack has raised their concerns.

“It has been a problem,” said Mary Edgar’s husband, William. “Those dogs have gotten loose, but this is the first time they went after one of the kids.”