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38 thoughts on “2020 Dog Bite Fatality: 32-Year Old Woman Mauled to Death by Dogs in Laurens County, South Carolina

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  1. Why do people choose to have dangerous canines in their lives? Why don’t people choose beagles or dachshunds or retrievers or similar instead? Because beagles and dachshunds and retrievers do not project the aggressive image that aggressive people want to project for themselves. People with aggressive personality choose dangerous canines as pets because that is the image that they want to project for themselves.

    • Also Richard, people get them because they want the dog to fight FOR them. They don’t realise that you owe your dog protection, they don’t owe you protection–unless they’re trained for it there’s no guarantee a dog, no matter how tough someone thinks it is or the breed–won’t just run the other way.

      Pitbulls are one of the worst guard dogs because they’re more likely to bite the handler than the mugger. A Jack Russell is far more useful.

  2. Wow!…That helicopter aerial view shows some sort of privacy fenced compound attached to a barn-shaped structure…The yard layout has multiple dog crates…This was not just a yard for pet dogs — it was evolving into a kennel for breeding operations…I saw photos of “Momma” on her bed and snuggled close to her face…Like so many pit bull owners who think they can have it all in one dog; manage it all in one dog …She possibly understood the pit bull’s dual nature of ingratiating cuddle bug/hair triggered explosively violent fighter but like so many who “think they ‘know’ and ‘can manage’ their pits”…(but others CAN’T) — they insist on falsely believing the pit is ever “loyal” to them alone — and she ran out of good odds… Pits do not have a fixed CONCEPT of LOYALTY…

  3. ANOTHER PIT BULL OWNER KILLED BY HER OWN DOGS. Every year this happens – and in 2020 this is the 2nd death of an actual pit bull advocate by dogs she raised from puppies. The sad irony smh

  4. She was breeding pits and the police haven’t confirmed the breeds of the dogs who killed her? Unless she had other dogs in her home, there’s no way the pits weren’t involved. I wonder if she knew they were aggressive and simlply ended up as a knowing victim. Or if she belived the lies that they are “sweet and harmless” and ended up learning the truth once they attacked her. We’ll never know.

    The worst thing about this is that she was a breeder, meaning her vicous mutants aggressive genes have already been passed on to who knows how many puppies, which are probably out wreaking havoc into other neighborhoods.

  5. Sorry, not sorry. If all the people breeding these shit dogs got killed by them the problem would end itself in short order.

  6. People breeding pit bulls surely don’t believe their dogs would kill them. I wonder what triggered these dogs to kill at this time. Did she try to break up a dog
    fight? Was there misdirected aggression?
    In the end it doesn’t matter. She is dead.
    Why are people breeding these dogs when there are so many safe breeds?

      • One-word reason: Money.

        If you have a breeding operation, you can make money. And it’s tax-free money.

        Why? Because if you’re a breeder, you’re probably not reporting the doggie income on your tax returns.

  7. Colleen…do we exactly know who the “SOB”‘s are that the father is referencing? His post left me more confused as to what happened. It sounds as if he is threatening the pit bulls themselves, but not sure what he can do about that.

  8. I feel so sorry for this father. He’s lost his baby girl to an entirely preventable death regardless of whether it was her pitbulls, or the neighbour’s pitbulls. (I think the father is referring to the dogs as SOBs). I wonder if he tried to warn her that breeding pitbulls was a bad idea…

    No matter what the supposed “trigger” was, if she’d been breeding whippets or beagles or poodles or even Dobermans, she’d still be alive.

    Now, there are unculled descendants from sires/dams with history of man-eating behaviour just waiting to ‘go off’ and slaughter more people.

    • Whippets, Beagles, Poodles, you know, dogs people actually WANT, not dogs like pit bulls that they have to be conned in to.

  9. KaD, dunno where I found it (some Bouvier fancier site, no doubt) but there are *half* as many registered Bouvs now than in 2000. I suspect Dobes (I see very few nowadays) and Rotts are on the wane since then, too. Why? Because I suspect some of the same people who might have to pay big dollars and train a proper dog are now grabbing up cheap pits, not training them, and hoping the pure fear of pitbulls will keep away people they don’t like.

  10. So tired of folks purporting to love pit bulls, while also breeding them. If you love them, please stop adding more that no one wants. What a horrible way to die. My heart goes out to her family

  11. Breeding pit bulls needs to be illegal. There are far too many of them in the world already. Did her own pits kill her? Were they for the neighbors? Honestly, it doesn’t matter to me. None of the dogs should have been bred in the first place.

    These monsters need to be banned. I feel so sorry for the father, who is clearly in distress over his loss.

    • Tax evasion is already illegal. Just go after the tax money that isn’t being thrown off from these breeding operations, and toss in some hefty jail sentences.

  12. It is going to be interesting to see what the connection is between Jeffrery and Jacqueline. The road she was walking along was very short and had about 5-10 houses on it. Both were pit bull breeders. There may have been breeding each other’s dogs together.

    Her poor father is clearly mourning over this. It just seems odd that he either didn’t know she was also into pits and breeding them or he is just leaving that out.

    • OR Christy, I wonder, did Jeffrey “rent space” from her for *his* pitbulls to dodge Animal Control knowing she was a single mom needing cash and she agreed to the arrangement?

      This is sometimes how crack houses get started.

      I too, find that relationship, curious.

      • Jae was not a single mom, she was married. Her name was Jacqueline Downs. The dog owner has been best friends with the family since he was 9 years old. No one breeds dogs, their all huge animal lovers. Everything from fish, hamsters or dogs. The dogs where fenced but dig up under the gate due to soft mud from days of rain. Jeff had already left for work. We are all devastated on both ends. This was an accident. We love Jae and Jeff.
        Please pray for our family.

        • Blame it on the rain…. really? That was a Milli Vanilli song. It is not a reason for a pit bull mauling to be explained away as accidental.

        • One of my small dogs accidently got into my neighbour’s yard after a major rain. He slipped under the fence where it was muddy.

          I went to the neighbour’s door and told them my dog got in their yard, and the neighbour lady went and got my dog back for me. I then plugged up the hole. No one was harmed because the dog involved was of a small companion breed, not a dog of a breed used in blood sports.

          This is a major tragedy and I feel bad for this lady and her family, but if the dogs that got into her yard were beagles or poodles, or any non-fighting breed, she’d be alive. Almost every dog fatality I read about involves pit bulls. There’s a big pattern here and instead of writing off pit bull maulings as accidents, people need to speak out about the danger of this breed.

        • Her daughter says on FB that

          “Jacqueline Didnt breed dogs. She had dogs, & they mated. & She always made sure her fur babies went to a LOVING home !”

          It’s not the current dog owner culture, but this is exactly how people traditionally owned dogs. They had dogs, the dogs kinda did their own thing, there were constant puppies. This is still the way it is with a lot of people. The problem traditionally was the dangers to the dogs – casually owned dogs tended to be road kill, or shot by neighbors for killing chickens, etc. Now you have a whole generation that was raised on having not normal pet dogs around, but pit bull dogs, and the risks have changed.

          I’m not saying having free-range dogs is a great idea or that the daughter is definitely correct, just that I think it’s fair to say there are 2 possible scenarios wrt the pit bulls in this attack – deliberate breeding for cash, or animal lovers who casually accumulated the breed of dog that’s almost impossible NOT to acquire today if you’re on a budget, then never bothered to speuter and oops, puppies, and hey, gotta charge something for them…

        • Accident? Not really. When you keep dogs that have been bred for bloodsport for centuries it should be foreseeable to anyone who cares to see. Pit bulls are 14 times more likely to escape confinement than other breeds. No one who really cares about pit bull would be breeding a dog that is glutting shelters and killing with regularity. It’s also not the type of dog that should be kept in or near a residence with children.

          • And as for accidental mating, that is sheer irresponsibility and explains exactly why spay and neuter LAWS need to be passed. There is no need for pit bulls, and there is especially no need for MORE pit bulls.

  13. He doesn’t seem to comprehend that his daughter was raising either the same breed of dog, or the actual dogs, that caused her death. Perhaps the police are not telling him which dogs killed her? Or they don’t know, yet.

    I’d welcome him here, any time.

    • Assuming you know the truth, Lakeisha, we then have [i]two[i] parents, at least one of which should have known, that pitbulls and children *do not mix* that agreed to keep, whether they bred them or not– a pack of inherently dangerous pitbulls.

      Now this poor woman is dead, whether by her own pitbulls or her neighbour’s pitbulls and a grieving spouse, parents, children and countless others including yourself.

      This was not an “accident”–it was entirely foreseeable that some tragedy was bound to happen with a minimum of two packs of pitbulls living nearby.

      Prayers aren’t going to stop this from happening again. Better fences are not going to prevent this. Stronger leashes are not going to prevent this.

      BSL, Dangerous Dog Laws and outlawing pitbull ownership will prevent this in the future.

  14. A lot of unanswered questions still. But the raw emotion from her father gives voice to all the collateral damage these monsters cause.

  15. Interesting mugshot…. he appears to have significant asymmetry to his face and scarring and nerve damage on the left side. Could this possibly be the result of a pit dog bite to the face?

    • This is a very confusing story. Not on this blog, but a bit of racist undertones with the FB comments. If, indeed, both of them owned/bred pits and three of the dogs killed her, how do we know for sure he’s wholly responsible? One person posted that the deceased woman had problems with her dogs “but no one would listen.” Until they do some DNA on the killers maybe we’ll know the culprits? Am I off here?

      • Good point. My guess is they grabbed the pits that were running lose.

        You are right about FB. It is getting crazy and turning into a possible rumor mill. Lots of interesting claims by people who knew them.

  16. Bottom line? I’m sure her father or mother will come out with the full story as they learn it, perhaps at a later date.

    FB is a sinkhole of nonsense, much of the time.

  17. I believe pit attacks on this age/sex will only increase, young women who want to save the breed from discrimination ugh! or whatever when in reality, they are totally out of their depth… they ‘baby’ these dogs and these dogs know that they are in control, at all times, hence they consistantly maul their owners and strangers to death

  18. The smirk on the dog owners face in his mugshot says it all…Jeffrey Sullivan, he thinks it’s great, he’s proud of his mutts

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