Fatal Attack in Georgia kills elderly couple

An elderly couple were apparently killed this weekend by a pack of dogs. The couple, retired University of Georgia professor Lothar Karl Schweder (77) and his wife, Sherri Schweder (65) who worked at the school's main library, were apparently out looking for their dog that had gotten loose.  The couple was found along a country road where they often walked their dog.

However, the couple never found their dog, and were instead, attacked by 11-14 dogs that are being described by officials as "mongrels" -- and from the looks of them, that's the best description possible.  While the dogs were not aggressive toward authorities, they were found surrounding the couple and the coronery concluded that the victims did die of dog bite wounds. Neighbors report that the dogs have been around for years and never caused a problem in the community.

The dogs belong to a man who used to live in the area but had to move due to medical reasons. However, supposedly a friend was taking the former owner to the property to feed the dogs regularly.

This is a tragic fatality.  The county doesn't have a leash law so the dogs were allowed to roam free with no consequence. This is  the third incident this year that has involved a pack of roaming dogs (6+ dogs) that have been involved in a fatal attack, including an attack last month on Israel Pope Jr, and this past April to Gordon Lykins of Winterhave, AZ.

I do applaoud that a lot of the articles on this story note just how rare attacks like this really are.

I'll update this if anything new comes of it. The story has been widely reported in more than 250 media outlets.

RIP.

Update 8/19/09: Thanks Rinalia for the update. But it seems as if there are quite a few differences in the media reporting on this. But from the more updated reports, it sounds like the dogs were essentially feral dogs.  Susan Fornash, the Director of Madison Oglethorpe Animal Shelter said that the dogs were malnourished and had a range of healt problems including fly bites on their ears, bite marks on their bodies, etc. She thinks the pack of dogs likely killed the couple because they were hungry and in search of food.  She also described the dogs as "Very Aggressive" toward humans -- which contradicts earlier reports. All 16 dogs have been euthanized.

Comments

[Rinalia]

From the first article: "Killer dogs mystify Lexington" - what? There is nothing mystifying about a pack of territorial predators attacking someone.

The two reports are a bit conflicting. The first one says the dogs were not aggressive, while the second said deputies had to shoot at the dogs to get them away from the bodies. The first says the dogs were not malnourished while the second shows pictures of undernourished dogs. One report says the dogs are wild/feral, another says they were abandoned/now taken care of by a neighbor. Holy colliding stories, batman!

[EmilyS]

oh BTW, your friend (ha) the terrierman has a new post up applauding dogbite.org, while sneering at Fatal Dog Attacks as "someone's tract book".

The man is truly deranged. At this point, I'm pretty convinced he's just writing to get a rise out of us. I don't understand why I can't convince pit bull people to STOP linking to him on their blogs.

[PAMM - People Against Moronic Men]

He's cooking his own goose by using DB as a "source".

[Rinalia]

Well, sixteen dogs, including five puppies have been summarily executed. They were described as wild/feral and malnourished; a far cry from some witness claims that the dogs were friendly, fat dogs.

http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=134030&catid=3

And just like I thought, the coroner thinks the dogs were probably hungry. He probably saw wounds that were more predatory in nature.

Sad all around.

[Brent Toellner]

Emily, it appears that the terrierman has fallen into the trap of seeing an increase in traffic when he writes something ridiculous about pit bulls, and then wants to follow up with more ridiculous statements to get more traffic.

I do think it's funny that I got booted out of the conversation when responding to his statement that Boston's law seems to be fine "IN REALITY" by asking how he defined it as working, because he had posted no bite numbers, no euthanasia numbers and no data on the amount of money being spent on the program. And for asking those questions, I got booted for "wasting his time." LOL. It seems that asking those three basic questions should be the first precursor to whether or not something is working fine....

[Dan]

"In the blink of an eye, we have a pack of 50 dogs because people don't spay and neuter," she (the director of the shelter) said.

I know some people are hesitant to push s/n because of health issues that are very real. For owned dogs who can be contained that should be between the owner and the vet, with the owner held responsible for consequences.

But this is about spay/neuter to avoid unwanted litters - an entirely different concept. These two helpless people are dead. But the lack of respect shown to the dogs because we, as a country, allow pets to breed to the point that we just casually kill whole shelters full on a regular basis was just as much a part of this. Should have been stopped long ago.

There were more than two victims here, as in most tragedies. May they all rest in peace.

[JAL]

I have no problem with spay neuter. I am very against mandatorty spay neuter.

In this case you have a disabled caregiver in a rural area. Could he get access to spay neuter? If he could get transportation to a facility, was it something that he could afford.

The Director did not say that the owner would not s/n, but that he did not. So the real 64,000.00 question is why not. Were services ever offered or discussed? Is there and effort in the area to promote low cost s/n? Could this have been avoided?

This county does not have leash law, grumping that people are not altering their pets is really putting the cart in front of the horse.