Kathleen Bertram, 69, of Matthews, died after being bitten in throat by a family pit bull.
Fatal Neck Bite
Grant County, IN - The Grant County Corner's Office issued a statement Tuesday about a dog bite fatality. At about 2:12 pm Monday, Grant County Medics, Jefferson Township Fire Department, Grant County Sheriff's deputies and Matthews Town Marshal responded to 303 High Street for a dog bite. "Subject has been bitten in the throat by a dog. Bleeding excessively at this time," according to audio dispatch logs. "She is bleeding heavily from her throat," the dispatcher said.
Noah Roy reported he was in the back bedroom of his home when he heard loud screams from the living room. Roy reported he then found the family dog, a pit bull, had attacked his 69-year old mother, Kathleen Bertram. His mother had been sitting on a chair in the living room holding her 3-year old granddaughter. She then fell from the chair and the granddaughter screamed. At that moment, the pit bull attacked Bertram, "biting down on her neck," according to the statement.
Matthews Police Marshal Chet Johnson, who responded to the scene, said that Bertram sat down on an "uneven" chair and fell to the floor. According to the coroner's office, Bertram was holding the 3-year old when she fell. Her granddaughter started crying. When she began crying, the dog came into the living room and attacked Bertram as she laid on the floor. The child's mother was in the room at the time of the attack. She called for her brother and husband to help, Johnson said.
Medical personnel arrived at the scene and began administering CPR to the victim. Due to the severity of the injuries, Bertram was pronounced dead at 2:55 pm. Marion Animal Control was called to the scene to take custody of the pit bull. Officers had to tranquilize the dog due to the animal still being actively aggressive at the scene, according to the statement. The dog was then removed from the residence. An autopsy of Bertram is pending, according to the statement.
Last month, 84-year old Loretta Moore was partially dismembered and killed by her son's five dogs in Boone County, Indiana. Her son, James Moore, then fought to get the dogs returned to him. Boone County officials were eventually forced to release all five dogs to their owners. A pit bull that James had been fostering for about a month was returned to its original rescue. The four other dogs, including two huskies, were returned to James under an agreement with the county.
Both Indiana fatal dog attacks involved family dogs killing a family member on the owner's property. Under normal circumstances, family members like Roy automatically surrender the dog to authorities. Typically no law forces them too. Boone County officials wanted to euthanize all five dogs involved in Moore's death, but could not because James refused to surrender them and state, county and local laws have no provision for euthanizing dogs that kill a person at home.
Disproportionate Response
Pit bulls habitually execute the killing bite as a disproportionate response to stimuli. These killing bites, targeting the head or neck, are often inflicted by family pit bulls on family members too. Even when in a safe, predictable environment, pit bulls consistently display these dangerous traits, "failure to communicate intention before an attack, disinhibited aggression and a disproportionate response to stimuli," we stated in our comments to the Department of Transportation last year.
View the DogsBite.org Google State Map: Indiana Fatal Pit Bull Attacks.Related articles:
10/15/21: 2021 Dog Bite Fatality: Woman Killed by Son's Dogs in Indiana; Son Wants Dogs...
Law enforcement departments across the United States should release consistent "baseline" information to the media and the public after each fatal dog mauling, including these items.
If that was an “actively aggressive” person with a weapon, the cops would have shot them on sight.
But when the murder weapon is teeth, apparently, police don’t shoot.
I’m confused.
Did the grandmother really scream? My first thought is: Is that just a fabrication? Dangerous dog owners love to make up lots of fabrications about the victims.
I agree. The more logical sequence is the pit attacking first, dragging grandma to the floor, causing granddaughter to scream. The only source for this is the son, who was in the backroom. So sad for the granddaughter.
Another adult was in the room and was presumably a witness. “The child’s mother was in the room at the time of the attack. She called for her brother and husband to help.”
…Cue drum roll…Here come all the pit apologists saying that the pit was trying to protect the tot from falling with grandma — or that the pit was trying to protect grandma from the screaming tot…
Then again maybe it was trying to protect THE CHAIR from so-called “dangerously clumsy humans”…
Just another day in the life with the live grenade of canines…
Pit bulls – “the live grenade of canines”… exactly… every single one. Some go off, some don’t… but why take the risk? Pit bull Nutters – they take the risk… and grandma suffers.
Grenade is close, I’m thinking more like a land mine.
I refer to them as “canine IEDs” .
The parents lost their likely free babysitter. So sad and it should never have happened. I wish we had more information on the dog:. Sex? Altered? I ask about that, as I do not believe castration is beneficial other than stopping production of offspring.
The “no bully left behind” faction are undoubtedly doing all within their power to rescue this fearless canine defender of uneven chairs.
Such a faction unfortunately exists in that region. “The Fort Wayne Pitbull Coalition urged the public to remember… … …”
…all of their usual blatant obvious lies.
wane.com local CBS news is all so very happy to print all of those lies.
This whole story is crazy. I don’t even know what to say here. My first thought is that the mutant saw the elderly woman and small child fall from the chair, it saw “fallen prey”, then went for the kill.
But I wonder how pit nuts will spin this into defending the dog.
I cannot imagine living in a house where you cannot fall or cry without the risk that a vicious animal will rip your throat out. Zero margin for “error.” Although falling off a chair is not an error, it is an accident. The only error is having the dog in the first place.
The pro-pit peebles will consider this a successful nanny dog nannying incident because the careless grandmother fell off a wobbly chair while holding the child resulting in the child being in danger and crying. Then the nanny dog comes to protect the child by ripping the grandmother’s neck out. It is all about protecting and nannying. Clearly justified. *sarcasm font off”
There was a young couple in the grocery store, of all places, with a small child and a pit bull puppy. Customers and store workers kept coming up to them to pet/hold the puppy. The dad was bragging that they had just purchased it and it was a purebred pit bull.
A store employee said, “They get a bad rap, but they can be sweet dogs. All how you raise them.” The small group all nodded and agreed. This one is going to be raised right, the mother said. This one is being socialized, we’re going to do it the right way…
The fact that people can bring a dog into a grocery store and the reaction is to fawn over it instead of demanding for it to removed from the building is crazy on its own. The fact that it was a pit they were gawking over is just the icing on the insanity cake.
Just wait until they bring that mutant back into the store as an adult to ‘socialize’ it, only that time it rips someone’s throat out. And they’ll be scratching their heads wondering what went wrong.
Yep, this is not the first time I’ve seen a dog, or even a pit, in that grocery store. Once it was a couple looking like they had just come off a meth bender with a pit with a fake service dog vest.
It’s kind of a downmarket place–not that I’m being haughty, I shop there too–and I don’t think the people who work there get paid enough to care. Seeing a puppy in the store and being encouraged to handle it was probably a welcome diversion.
Hearing all of their talk just made me think that everybody who buys a pit says they’re going to raise it right. Who buys a puppy and says “Yeah, I’m gonna make sure this dog kills my family member”? Yet these things keep happening.
When I see dogs in stores, I get my business transacted as quickly as possible so I can get the bleep out.
“You read your line so cleverly
and never missed a cue
Then came act two
You seemed to change
you acted strange
And why I’ll never know”
The JoAnn’s Fabric store in my city actually has a sign at the fabric cutting counter asking customers to keep their dog’s paws off the counter.
As if someone is gonna walk in a shop with a puppy and while people are fawning over it say, “I don’t have the foggiest notion how to raise a Goldie, never mind a walking death machine. Imma gonna ignore it, not gonna exercise it, once a week I’ll wave a cookie around and tell it to “sit” and turn my kids into pavement cheese once a week. Then when it shows signs of aggression Imma gonna stick it in a flimsy crate and a couple years from now, I’ll let it eat my gramma and babies because I won’t be able to admit how bad its gotten”
Nobody starts out with any dog wanting to be a crappy owner. But most aren’t stellar. Just walk down the street and look at all the dogs that can’t follow a basic command, are barking or lunging (whether for good or ill).
Most of those dogs aren’t murdering people no matter how deluded about their dog-raising skills, their owners, are.