Pit bull mix attacks boy in Columbia Heights

As he stepped out of his mom's car in front of their Columbia Heights apartment into the darkness late Wednesday, 4-year-old Taylor Bailey saw the dog's eyes shining in the shadows. It was the same pit bull mix that had bitten his father a week earlier.

"There's the dog!" Bucky, as the boy is known, said to his mother, and she urged the boy to come to her.

But the 85-pound male named Money dashed across the street and chased Bucky, who ran in circles screaming until the dog knocked him to the ground, biting and holding on, thrashing.

"It hurted a lot," the boy said, showing tiny legs with punctures, scratches and a bit of flesh missing. "It didn't go away. It was just trying to grab me ... trying to kill me."

The latest metro-area pit bull attack came at midnight Wednesday after the Staffordshire bull terrier mix broke loose from the neighbors' carport. During a terrifying struggle that lasted several minutes, Bucky's mother, Melinda Walters, fought off the dog.

Police ticketed the Spring Lake Park owner of the dog, as well as a relative who was watching him in Columbia Heights.

Owner Marquita Mooney, 23, told police she would have the dog put down rather than register him as a potentially dangerous animal, as police requested. That requires an insurance bond, fee payments, kennel requirements and more.

The attack is sure to fuel an intense debate over whether pit bulls and other so-called dangerous breeds should be banned in Minnesota communities. It's a debate that's taken on urgency since a pit bull killed a boy in his north Minneapolis home on Aug. 16.

"Kids are easy targets," said Bucky's grandfather, Ron Walters.

Walters suggests that as one way to keep dog owners accountable, a new ordinance could require owners of pit bulls and other dangerous breeds to post $5,000 bonds to keep the dogs, with the money to be paid to dog-bite victims.

Critics of such ideas say that it's unfair to target a specific breed and that behavior is shaped more by owners who teach the dogs to be vicious or fail to socialize them than by genetics.

Identifying a pit bull is difficult, dog experts say, because it's a generic term. The American pit bull terrier, the American Staffordshire terrier and the Staffordshire bull terrier all are often called pit bulls.

The 1-year-old dog in this case was being kept in Columbia Heights after it bit two dogs in Spring Lake Park about two weeks ago, police reports show. Mooney had been ticketed in those incidents.

Flashbacks haunt mother

Bucky said he's glad police took away the scary, tawny-colored dog. Thursday, his mother was in worse emotional shape, weeping each time she imagined what could have happened had she not been there when her son was attacked.

"I've cried so much more than he has," said Walters, 26. Her knees were scraped and her thigh scratched from wrestling with the dog.

"The fear keeps running through my head," she said. "The fear of what could have happened."

During the struggle, Walters said, she recalled stories of how 7-year-old Zachary King Jr. was killed by his family's pit bull in his north Minneapolis home. She feared her son would die, too.

Columbia Heights Police Capt. Bill Roddy said the dog had run across the street to the apartment complex in the 4600 block of Polk Street NE. Roddy said he is being held in quarantine.

Dog kept biting boy's leg

Roddy confirmed the account given by the mother and son: The dog bit the boy in the left leg, pulling him to the ground, then kept biting him in the right lower leg.

Walters was carrying another son, 3-year-old Jason, on her hip during much of the fight, she said.

Bucky said he tried to hide from the dog, but he kept chasing the boy.

"He just ran out and bit my leg," the boy said. "He wouldn't let go."

Joy Powell • 612-673-7750

Joy Powell • jpowell@startribune.com