A woman is in critical condition after being bitten by a dog in the Tenderloin on Tuesday morning.
The unidentified woman was bitten around 9:20 a.m., according to the San Francisco Fire Department. Fire department paramedics treated the woman’s “serious injuries” on scene and transported her to a local trauma center.
A video posted by the Instagram account @tenderloinactivities1 appears to show the immediate aftermath of the attack, which occurred just outside of the Phoenix Hotel where it borders Larkin Street.
In that video, a woman is lying face-down with her legs up in the air. There are visible bloodstains on the front of her body. The off-leash dog, likely a pit bull, walks around the woman and up the street with blood on its head, shoulders and front legs.
San Francisco police have not yet released the name or age of the woman, nor have they identified the dog’s owner.
The dog died sometime after the attack. A video posted by KPIX shows the dog restrained by police, laying on the ground and unresponsive.
San Francisco Animal Care and Control said the dog was deceased when its staff arrived on scene around 9:30 a.m.
Of the 46 dog attacks in the last 30 days, 11 took place in the Tenderloin, including Tuesday’s attack, according to police department data published on the city’s open data portal. All of San Francisco’s neighborhoods except the Tenderloin, South of Market and Mission reported fewer than five dog bites in the last month.
The data underscores the neighborhood’s continued struggle to address these violent incidents: Mission Local reported in March that the Tenderloin accounted for more than a quarter of dog-bite incidents at the end of last year, and that its rate of attacks was skyrocketing amid a citywide increase.
San Francisco’s dog court, where “vicious and dangerous dog hearings” are held, was revived in the early summer after a year’s hiatus.
It was confirmed to be a pit bull. Not suspected, confirmed.
I really don’t understand why they haven’t implemented harders laws on dog owners and sanctions. There’s a lot of dogs without leashes attacking kids in the tenderloin. I personally had an incident where a dog jumped and try to attack my 12-month-old baby. The person with the dog was high on drugs and I called the police and the officers were being madder at me for calling them instead of grabbing the dog without leash.
SF Health Code Section 41.12(a) does not allow dogs off leash outside of private property or designated exercise areas:
https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/sf_health/0-0-0-187
I live up the hill and need to transit through the area to access BART and MUNI, seeing many people with off-leash dogs, similar to the one in this attack. The City needs to enforce this law more effectively, to curb dangerous encounters that can end in two lives ruined – that of the human in the attack and that of the animal that gets put down on the spot. The areas in and around TL will continue to degrade if stuff like this persists.
If the dog lives, it is a safe-keep by ACC, as evidence of a crime. Once the criminal proceedings are complete, and the judge determines the dog may be returned, the dog can only be returned upon successful completion of training (dog and owner/handler). Or…?
JC, did you read the article? The dog is dead. It is standard practice to put down any dog that attacks someone like this. Presumably its owner will face felony charges.
The constant stress and conflict on the streets down there are not healthy for dogs. Reports elsewhere say there was a big altercation between people that proceeded the bite attack, and that the dog may even have been the owner of the dog. Don’t know if that’s true, but a sad situation all the way around.