BANGOR, Maine — Kim Giles is afraid to leave her house on Sixth Street.
She said she is afraid that her next-door neighbor’s German shepherd mix, which attacked and mauled her and her dog in the front yard a month ago, will get free and attack her again.
“It’s very frightening,” she said Monday. “I don’t feel secure.”
Police on Monday charged the man who owns the dog with keeping a dangerous dog and having a dog at large.
Giles still has deep purple scars on her left hand and forearm from when the dog attacked her and her black Lab, Miles, dragged her and then attacked her again in a matter of seconds on the morning of Nov. 10.
She said she just wants to go outside without fear and knows she will never feel safe until the aggressive dog that attacked her is removed.
“He is going to get out again and it will happen again,” Giles said. “I want him gone.”
Neighbors agree. One called the Bangor Daily News on Monday to say he was concerned for children walking in the neighborhood, since Vine Street School is just two houses away from Giles’ house.
“She lives 200 feet from Vine Street,” said neighbor Paul Fuller, who lives on Seventh Street. “Kids walk by there all the time. The neighborhood is frightened to death over this.”
Another neighbor, who was out walking her dog Monday and who asked not to be identified, said she no longer walks by the house and added that she has told her grandchildren not to walk along Sixth Street between Larkin and Lincoln streets.
The Bangor Police Department’s animal control officer took a report Nov. 10 about the dog attack and the dog was then quarantined for almost a week and a half. On Monday of this week, police charged its owner, Scott Smith, 31, with having a dog at large and keeping a dangerous dog. His court date is Jan. 19.
“This incident involved a large dog which escaped from a backyard and attacked a resident who was walking her own dog,” Bangor police Sgt. Chip Hodges said in a statement Tuesday. “Both the resident and her dog suffered wounds which required medical treatment.”
Hodges added that “the dog, (large but breed unknown), which is believed to be up-to-date with its shots, was quarantined for 10 days. Afterwards a letter was received by the police department from a local veterinarian indicating that the animal did not appear to have any health issues.”
A dog could be heard barking from inside Smith’s house on Sixth Street when he answered his door at around 1 p.m. Monday. He declined to comment on what happened to Giles. But when asked if his dog had ever bitten anyone before Giles, Smith said “no.”
Giles recounted Monday, sometimes with a shaky voice, what happened to her a month ago when she returned home from walking Miles, who was on a leash.
Her neighbor’s dog had escaped from its backyard and was crouched down and looked like he was going to attack, Giles said.
“I knew he was coming,” she said.
Giles tried to push the dog away with her foot, but was unsuccessful and the animal latched onto the back of Miles’ neck.
“The next thing I know, we are on the ground,” she said. “I was able to get up, and when I got up that is when he got my hand. He was dragging me. We ended up by the house, by the cars.”
The dog released her left hand and she ran up her short driveway, but the dog followed her and grabbed hold of her left forearm, Giles said. Miles, an 8-year-old Lab, was there and the attacking dog let her go and went after her dog again.
Michael Giles, her 21-year-old son, was inside the house and heard her screams and ran outside to help.
“As Michael pulled him off Miles, he got bit,” she said. “I didn’t know he had been bitten until after I got to the hospital.”
After what seemed like a lifetime but was probably just a minute or two, Giles said, Smith arrived and took control of his dog. An ambulance was called for Giles, who suffered severe bites to her left hand and forearm, and minor bite wounds on her right hand. She was taken to Eastern Maine Medical Center. Her son arrived shortly after her and was treated for superficial dog bites to both of his hands.
“I don’t know if I am ever going to regain full use of my thumb,” she said. “I have nerve damage.”
Miles was treated by a veterinarian for bites to his neck, ear and lip that required a number of stitches.
Giles said Smith tearfully apologized to her.
Giles has lived at her house for the last 21 years and said that Smith moved into his mother’s home next door in August.
It has been a month, and Giles still gets nervous every time she leaves her house. She hasn’t put up her normal Christmas decorations because she is afraid, and she no longer feels safe walking her dog in the neighborhood.
“I put him in a car and take him up to the golf course,” she said of Miles.
She is also very fearful for students who walk by her house to go to school.
“Children walk by all the time,” Giles said. “I think parents should know. People need to know. I certainly am not comfortable living next to that dog.”
She added, “I will do everything in my power to have that dog removed.”