Dog attack not cause of man’s death, pathologist determines
Posted July 9, 2015 6:22 am.
Last Updated July 10, 2015 11:47 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A dog attack is not to blame for the cause of death of a man in Hamilton, a pathologist determined.
Two men were walking a dog just after 11 p.m. Wednesday on Burton Street in downtown Hamilton when the animal attacked one of the men, police said.
A neighbour told the Hamilton Spectator that one of the men walking the dog was riding a bike.
A passerby hit the dog with a baseball bat but the man was pronounced dead at the scene.
Hamilton Animal Services has identified the dog as a Shar Pei Fila cross.
“I seen it. He was down and then got back up,” said neighbour Bert Stoner who then called police, as quoted in the Hamilton Spectator.
Stoner told the newspaper the dog only went after the man who was riding a bike.
“I thought it was a fight. We get fights here all the time,” Martin Wall, who was sitting on his porch nearby and heard the screams, told the Spectator.
Wall was on Keith Street just one street north of where the attack happened.
Another resident James Cox told the Spectator that he thought the screams were from a woman.
“It went on for 10 minutes … a dog was barking the whole time,” Cox said.
The animal is in the care of the city’s animal control department.
The Spectator said fatal dog attacks are extremely rare in the city.
Original reports stated the dog in question was a pit bull. A law regulating pit bulls in Ontario, which took effect in August of 2005, prohibits people from owning, breeding, importing and transferring the controversial breed.
There is a clause allowing anyone who owned a pit bull before the law went into effect to keep the dog. The animal must be neutered, and on a leash and wear a muzzle when in public.
