77-year-old man attacked by three pit bulls in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES – Jose Rodriguez, 77, says he was walking down the street where he lives when he was attacked by three pit bulls.

“My father was seriously attacked. He’s an older man and he was walking down the street… the dogs surrounded him and started tearing him apart from the waist down,” said his daughter Lupita Rodriguez.

“He was holding on to the fence, trying to hold himself up and climb over the fence as high as he could. The dogs attacked him with their legs and dragged him down.”

Lupita said no one was with the dogs at the time of the attack.

She said they were “…not on a leash. They were unattended.”

And she said her father now needs tendon and ligament surgery.

About two months ago, another neighbor, Miguel Jara, said he was also bitten by the dogs.

He said he was on the same street and was bitten “here, here and here all over my trunk.”

The dogs come from a home where a woman named Heidi lives. She did not want to make her last name public.

She said she had been caring for the deceased and was trying to get them to a new home.

She claims both she and the dogs were harassed by the neighbors.

She claims the dogs were upset and accused Jose of hitting them.

He said he did not attack them but tried to fight them off when attacked.

Animal control came to the neighborhood to investigate and decided to remove the dogs from the house for the time being, but shortly after they did so, an argument broke out between a group of neighbors and Heidi.

Everything became very tense.

“This is what happens when emotions get out of control,” said Lupita’s brother Alberto Maytorena.

Alberto and his sister Lupita defended their father and accused the dogs’ caretaker of, for example, letting them run around freely and thereby creating a danger for the neighborhood.

And the tension?

“Everyone wants results. Everyone wants her to do something,” Alberto said.

Which action?

She said they want Heidi to “take care of these dogs, get rid of these dogs and make sure these dogs are kept in check.”

These three pit bulls went from Heidi’s home to an animal shelter, but what will happen to them next is completely unclear.