« I was keeping them for a buddy and now the dogs got me in trouble. »
The dogs’ owner said this isn’t the first time.
The victim is stable and being treated at St. Bernard Hospital. As he recovers, the dogs’ owner is battling a fight: seven citations from police.
When asked if he was going to fight to get his dogs back, Renard Thurmond said “I don’t want them back.”
“In my mind they were good dogs,” said Thurmond, who admitted the unpredictable Sunshine and Bingo have escaped from his Englewood backyard before. “They were protective of me.”
“They’ve gotten under that fence plenty of times,” said Thurmond. When asked why he didn’t get the fence fixed, Thurmond said “I tried fixing the fence. Cars keep hitting it.”
Now, Thurmond won’t need to make any repairs. The dogs were whisked away by animal control because they pounced on a pedestrian off the alley on 59th and Marshfield Wednesday morning.
“I noticed his both hands were completely ripped apart,” said Joseph Drish, who heard the screams while working on a Cook County board-up job nearby.
“I jumped in my truck and tried pushing the dogs against the fence and realized that the dogs weren’t gonna let loose off the bodies,” said Drish. “So I grabbed the nail gun and then proceeded to shoot the dogs with my nail gun.”
Even that didn’t work. As officers tried to corral the dogs, first responders rushed the victim to the hospital.
“I apologized to him earlier,” said Thurmond. He said he’s OK with the grim fate the dogs likely face.
“I was keeping them for a buddy and now the dogs got me in trouble,” lamented Thurmond. “I don’t want them back.”
Animal control would not say what would happen to the dogs but only confirmed the dogs’ owner willingly surrendered the animals.
