Two dogs that neighbors identify as rottweilers had been slipping loose from a yard near Virginia Court and the Trailside neighborhood in Green Township for months before they attacked a woman and her dog on the Ohio Trail, according to neighbors. The woman needed surgery on both her hand and her face and is now out of work, and her dog did not survive the attack.
Neighbors told WKRC they had been complaining for months about the two rottweilers getting loose before the attack happened. The outlet reports that the woman's dog had to be put down after the encounter on the trail, and that the dogs were taken into the dog warden's custody afterward. Her injuries, the station reported, included wounds to both her hand and face serious enough to require surgery, leaving her out of work in the aftermath.
Neighbors Say They Sought Help for Months
Sydney Meyer, who has two young children and a dog and regularly walks the trails, is among the residents who raised alarms about the dogs before the attack, per the station's report. Another resident, identified only as Lindsey, said the response came too late and questioned what might happen if a child were attacked instead. A former neighbor told the outlet that her family became afraid to go into their own backyard because the dogs repeatedly got into it, and that her family eventually moved away because of the repeated incidents.
Residents say they sought help from multiple channels, including zoning, the dog warden, and nonemergency police, according to the same account. Green Township police confirmed they received a handful of complaints about the dogs, but said those kinds of incidents are typically handed off to animal control rather than handled directly by officers. After the attack, the dogs' owner was cited by Green Township police.
Dog Warden's Office Stayed Silent
When the station visited the dog warden's office by 1:30 p.m., the warden was not there to give an interview, and staff asked that questions be submitted by email instead. The office had not provided a response by the time of the station's reporting. Attempts to reach the owners of the dogs allegedly involved in the attack also went unanswered, per the outlet.
A Pattern Seen Elsewhere in Hamilton County
The Green Township case echoes another recent Hamilton County incident in Colerain Township, where a woman was mauled by a rottweiler and a pit bull after the dogs escaped from a neighbor's yard, according to WLWT. That attack unfolded around 4 p.m. on a Friday on Applevalley Court, and a second neighbor who tried to help was also bitten, though he suffered only minor injuries, WLWT reported separately. Police said the Colerain victim suffered lacerations across her arms serious enough that responders used two tourniquets to save her life. Hamilton County commissioners later pressed the dog warden about why the dogs involved were still living with their owner after the attack.
Resources for enforcement can be thin relative to the territory involved. The Hamilton County dog warden's office told FOX19 it had budgeted for 10 officers to cover 52 square miles across the county. Under Ohio law, an owner, keeper, or harborer of a dangerous or vicious dog must not negligently fail to prevent that dog from committing an act that injures a person, according to Ohio Revised Code Section 955.22. A related provision of the state code defines a dangerous dog as one that, without provocation, has caused injury other than killing or serious injury to a person, among other listed circumstances, per Ohio Revised Code Section 955.11.
