Wednesday, March 31, 2004 | 11:38 a.m.
Before her release Tuesday from the University Medical Center's pediatric trauma unit, 8-year-old Dajahane Neely watched a video of her favorite animated movie, "All Dogs Go to Heaven."
Three days earlier, she had a run-in with two dogs that probably won't.
Neely was attacked by two loose pitbulls on Saturday and hospitalized for bite wounds from her skull to her toes.
Bat-wielding neighbors stopped the attack, and a Metro Police officer had to shoot one of the dogs. The dog's owner was arrested for obstructing police, failing to license the dogs and letting the dogs run loose.
In the wake of the attack, Las Vegas officials are considering toughening the law to make owners more accountable for vicious animals.
With 50 stitches and surgical staples around her left ear Tuesday, Neely was in good spirits as she prepared to be released.
"I saw the dogs come at me and I ran to hide but they found me," Neely said recounting the 11:30 a.m. incident at the 1800 block of J Street outside her residence in the Villa Capri apartments in West Las Vegas.
"They bit me (when I was) on the ground. I don't know how many times. My eyes were closed."
Michelle Breland, Dajahane's mother, said that had her daughter not covered up properly with her arms over her face and throat -- and had neighbors not responded quickly -- the outcome would have been far more tragic.
"I'd be making funeral arrangements instead of standing in a hospital right now," Breland said. "They definitely would have killed her."
Breland said it is time to hold accountable the real culprits of dog attacks.
"It's not the dogs' fault -- it's their owners' fault," Breland, a former pit bull owner, said. "If people feel they have to have these vicious dogs for protection, or for whatever reason, then they have to take steps to make sure those animals do not get out and hurt people.
"My daughter has a tough struggle ahead with plastic surgery and in dealing with what happened to her."
Breland is an unemployed single mother of two whose children receive Social Security benefits because their father was murdered in California in the mid-1990s, she said. Breland said she receives no state assistance to raise her children and she and her children have no health insurance.
UMC spokeswoman Cheryl Persinger said despite the family having no money, UMC, the county hospital, is committed to getting Dajahane excellent treatment.
"Our social services department will work with the family to get Dajahane any kind of assistance that is available and direct the family to the proper support groups they might need in the recovery process," Persinger said.
"They also will set up follow-up appointments for Dajahane through the outpatient center."
As difficult as her future will be, given what happened Saturday, Dajahane is lucky to have any future at all.
At the onset of the attack, Dajahane's brother, 10-year-old Bernard "Day-Day" Neely, came running into his apartment, yelling "they've got her, they've got her." Breland rushed outside.
A man who identified himself only as "Bone" grabbed a wooden baseball bat and attacked the dogs, as did another neighbor armed with an aluminum bat.
"I hit those dogs hard enough to kill them, but it only made them meaner," Bone said. "They were just vicious. They went after anyone who came near them -- me, the police, anyone."
A Metro Police officer shot and killed one of the dogs and police and Las Vegas Animal Control officers captured and impounded the other.
Police arrested the dogs' owner at the scene. Anthony Clark, 33, was booked into the city jail on one count of obstructing a police officer and two counts each of dogs running at large, dogs without licenses and dogs without proof of rabies vaccinations -- all misdemeanors.
City of Las Vegas Animal Control Lt. Karen Coyne said Clark was released Monday night. She would not say whether he posted a bond or was released on his own recognizance because that is "historical criminal information" that her agency by law cannot release, she said.
Clark is scheduled to appear in Las Vegas Municipal Court on May 6.
His surviving dog is being held in quarantine for 10 days for rabies observation at the Lied Animal Foundation Clinic, which serves as the city pound.
Coyne said the city intends to have the dog classified as a vicious animal and destroyed. Clark will be given a 10-day notice to appeal that classification to the court-appointed Animal Advisory Committee. A decision by that board is appealable to Municipal Court.
Despite ever-rising increases in local population, incidents of dog bites throughout Clark County have fluctuated only slightly -- 124 to 145 per 100,000 population -- between 1999 and 2002, the latest year for which statistics are available, the state biostatistician's office said.
Dr. Wei Yang, the state chief biostatistician and director of the Center for Health Data and Research in Carson City, cautioned that the dog bite data reflects only reports from major hospital records that were collected primarily for a one-time, four-year study to determine dog bite trends.
Still, the numbers in the limited study are alarming.
The study found that children ages 5 to 9 make up the group of people most commonly attacked by dogs, with 294 bites per 100,000 population in Clark County, said Yang, whose agency is part of the Nevada State Health Division.
The second most attacked group is ages 10 to 14 (266 per 100,000) and third is those 4 years old and younger (196 per 100,000), the state study says.
Of the 10 hospitals monitored statewide for the study, UMC by far led the pack, treating 53 percent of dog bite patients (4,939) between 1999 and 2002.
In the four years of the study, 7,889 Clark County residents -- 9,283 people statewide -- were treated for dog bites at hospitals (136 per 100,000).
Coyne said there are about 780 dog bites per year in the city limits and that the numbers have been consistent for several years.
The state study and city statistics do not distinguish between minor dog bites or serious dog maulings with multiple bites.
Coyne also said there have been no significant or unusual reports of stray dogs in the area where Dajahane was attacked.
Breland said except for an occasional loose puppy she had seen no stray dogs roaming her neighborhood until Saturday's incident.
Dajahane said she is not afraid of dogs as a result of the incident, but she says she doesn't want to talk about it with other children when she returns to McCall Elementary School after spring break because the attack "is ugly."
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