To all dog owners out there, please be very careful of your dogs and keep them on a leash at all times when their out for a walk. Because it almost cost the life of a South Carolina mother.
A mother-of-three was viciously scalped and had both of her arms ripped off by two pit bulls and a German shepherd.
38-years-old Kyleen Waltman was walking home from her boyfriend’s house when the three dogs attacked her in Abbeville County, South Carolina. Waltman lost consciousness as the dogs bit her skull until it was visible, her eyelids, and chewed her colon.
Her sister Amy Wynne, 41, told the ‘Daily Mail’ how she was savagely attacked on a sidewalk in Honea Path northwest of Columbia on March 21.
“When she passed out, they were eating her alive.”
“The dogs dragged her, they scalped her. Her skull was showing. They tore her left eyelid off. They tore her right cheek off, left a hole. They ate the skin off her inner thigh and ate the flesh off her arms and ripped them off,” she said
Waltman suffered extensive injuries as a result of the attack, including to her legs and arms, according to a GoFundMe page Waltman’s sister set up to raise funds for her medical bills and other expenses.
Waltman has received 109 staples in the front of her head and at least 90 on the back to close her gaping wounds, her sister told the outlet.
She also was fitted with a permanent trachea tube in her throat because bacteria from the dogs’ mouths got into her esophagus, Wynne said, adding that Waltman has to speak using a voice-generator box after losing her vocal cords.
The gravely injured woman nearly died three times — in the ambulance, in the helicopter, and on the operating table, Wynne told the outlet.
“They had to put in a colonoscopy bag and her appendix shut down and they put her on dialysis. Doctors are hoping to regrow the tissue for her colon,” she said.
Below are the updates from Waltman’s sister Wynne from a GoFundMe page:
“We thought her right shoulder was going to be good and they were able to fit it with a prosthetic, well yesterday they found an infection in the bone and had to remove more of the bone. So now she will not be able to have regular prosthetics on either shoulder,” Wynne wrote in an update to the fundraiser.
“Her left leg is giving not only her but the doctors a fit. The infection in it is the same infection that she has had throughout her whole body, but for some reason the infection in her leg they can’t stop from spreading,” Wynne added.
When doctors tried to tell Waltman how they had been unable to save both of her arms, Waltman began to panic and had to be sedated by medical professionals until she was in a state where she could deal with her new reality. Wayne said that her sister is now “fully aware” that she will never have arms again.
“The doctors have told Kyleen once again about her arms and about most of the damage the dogs had done. She is now fully aware of the situation. She still has a long way to go. She has survived this for a reason,” Wynne wrote on the fundraising site.
The owner of the three dogs, Justin Minor, 36, is charged with three counts of owning dangerous animals attacking a human, a rabies violation, and allowing dangerous animals off his property unrestrained.
He once told police that “once a dog tastes blood, that’s it,” after some of them killed his chickens, according to testimony at a preliminary hearing late last month.
Abbeville County sheriff’s investigator Lt. Jeffrey Hines has revealed that Minor’s dogs had also attacked somebody else on Christmas Eve.
The violent dog attack occurred on March 22, 2022, after Minor allowed his dogs to run loose in the rural South Carolina country.
The family has raised more than $290,000 for her recovery.
Sources: AWM, Daily Mail
