Woman Mauled by 2 Pit Bulls

A woman was savagely mauled while protecting her baby from two attacking pit bulls in Santa Ana on Saturday evening, police said.

The dogs ripped into the woman’s legs, down to the bone, before a friend and a bystander rescued her, suffering minor bite wounds in the process, police said.

Ofelia Herrera was carrying her 8-month-old infant in her arms about 6 p.m. when she entered the frontyard of her friend, Mercedes Linares, on the 400 block of East Adams Street, said Sgt. Doyle Smith of the Santa Ana Police Department.

“Two female pit bulls came through a back gate and attacked her without provocation, knocked her to the ground,” Smith said. “She protected her baby” while the dogs repeatedly bit her legs and her stomach. The baby didn’t suffer a scratch, police said.

Linares and bystander Matthew Hernandez, 16, tried to stop the animals. “These other two people got bit chasing the dogs or getting the dogs off her,” Smith said.

Linares suffered bites to the left hand and the left calf and Hernandez had a minor injury to his left calf. All three were taken to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana.

Herrera, 34, was in serious but not life-threatening condition Saturday night, police.

“We have our share of bites, but our animal control people . . . said these were some of the worst they had ever seen,” Smith said.

The dogs, which belong to Linares’ neighbor, were taken to the city’s animal shelter.

Serious pit bull attacks occur about five times per year in Orange County.

In June, a 75-pound pit bull attacked two people in Huntington Beach before it was shot to death. The victims, who suffered bite wounds to their hands, were trying to break up a fight involving the pit bull and another dog. A third resident shot the dog.

In May, a 53-year-old Huntington Beach woman was hospitalized after she tried to stop a dog fight in her backyard.

In March, an investigator for the county district attorney’s office was attacked while working on a welfare fraud case in Fullerton.