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Dog owners sought after pit bull attack

FULTON TOWNSHIP — Avalon Aegerter felt like she was playing tug of war when a pit bull attacked her Friday afternoon—only she was the toy, she said.

“It wouldn’t let go,” she said. “It was like when you play with a rope with your dog … like tug of war, kind of, but it was playing with my jeans.”

The jeans bear the blood and holes to prove her story.

Now, the 14-year-old Fulton Township girl has four stitches above her left ankle and a series of rabies shots scheduled. The owners of the dog that bit her are at large.

Avalon and her cousin, 11-year-old Teagan Larson, were biking down County H next to Murwin Park in Fulton Township when the incident happened around 3:30 p.m. Friday. Teagan was a little ahead of Avalon when the older girl saw two pit bulls running toward her, she said.

One dog, white with brown spots, went straight for Avalon’s leg, she said. She got off her bike and tried to shake the dog off, but it wouldn’t budge.

Mark Atkinson, Fulton Township, saw the incident as he was driving past and pulled over, he said.

“I stopped, hollered at the dog, and it let go of her then ran back and attacked her again,” he said.

The second time, the dog bit her in the buttocks and knocked her to the ground, Atkinson said.

Atkinson’s friends, Kenny and Vivian Roush, were driving behind him. They stopped and ushered Avalon into their car, dropping her off at Teagan’s house a block away so she could call the police.

Meanwhile, Atkinson continued to yell at the dog and its owners, a man and woman in the park, he said.

The owners gathered the white dog and another pit bull, brown with white markings, got into their silver Volkswagen Beetle and drove away, Atkinson said.

Atkinson wrote down the license plate as they drove away, but the number traced to a Beloit family that didn’t own a Beetle, said Sgt. Jason Harding with the Rock County Sheriff’s Department.

Now, the department has asked the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to run the letters and numbers Atkinson wrote down to see if anything similar shows up in its records. The department hopes to get word in a day or two, but “it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack at this point,” Harding said.

Because Avalon doesn’t know if the dog that bit her is vaccinated, she must receive rabies shots herself. The first one was the day of the attack, when hospital workers inserted a needle into her wounds.

“That was more painful than getting bit by the dog,” she said.

She received another shot in her arm Monday and has three more scheduled over the next month, said her mother, Stacy Cadence Aegerter.

Once Avalon came home from the hospital safe and sound, Stacy thought about what happened and cried, she said.

“I started thinking, ‘Who does this?’” she said. “Who lets a kid sit there with bite marks bleeding?”

On the other hand, she’s grateful for the neighbors who assisted her daughter.

As for Atkinson, he just wants the people who let their dog attack Avalon to be found, he said.

“He don’t belong having that dog,” Atkinson said. “And then run after it attacked a little girl. That ain’t right.”

To help

The Rock County Sheriff’s Department is looking for the owners of two pit bulls, one white with brown markings and one brown with white markings.

The pit bulls attacked a 14-year-old girl Friday afternoon in a Fulton Township park.

The owners appeared to be a man and woman driving a silver Volkswagen Beetle.

If you have any information, call Sgt. Jason Harding at (608) 757-7917.