A woman survived an attack by two pit bulls on Saturday that can only be described as vicious. Fire personnel and medics who responded took the woman to the hospital, where she was in surgery as Animal Control officers removed the dogs from the Goleta neighborhood. Owner Armando Coronado, 24, was arrested on a charge of possessing a “mischievous animal that causes serious bodily injury.”
The dogs, Chop and Rosie, had roamed the neighborhood, escaping regularly from a loose gate. They went through a broken fence between their yard and the backyard where the attack took place on April 11. Two weeks before, Rosie was reported to Animal Control for attacking a dog being walked on a leash on Ellwood Station Road, which is to the other side of the house on San Milano Road where Coronado lived.
The address has a long history of dog encounters and Animal Control — including another pit bull, Benji, frequently on the loose and once trapping a neighbor in his garage, and a chihuahua that was found dead in a box at the Ellwood Station Road fence-line — that dated back to 2017. Both Benji and the chihuahua were owned by other people at the residence.