Hero Neighbor’s Partner Killed by Dogs in Tragic Twist After He Saved Victim in Similar Attack, Court Records Reveal

Before that, more surprising details were revealed in court documents obtained by News Agency about the May 19 dog attack that led to Cowan’s death.

The year-old littermates caught on camera attacking Cowan had attacked others and had shown aggression toward their owner, Linda Cutler, Brevard County Court records show. 

Cutler, 29, has been charged with manslaughter and is held without bond in the Brevard County Jail.

Her arrest came eight days after her 50-year-old neighbor, Cowan, was fatally wounded while walking her own little dog on their street. That dog was not one of the dogs found dead at her residence, Goodyear said.

It was nearly 2 a.m. on May 19 when Cowan’s partner of 30 years heard her cries for help outside their home. 

He sprinted through the dark to save her. And wielding a knife at the still-attacking dogs, Donnell Smith frantically called 911 and tried to stop the bleeding from Cowan’s neck, court records show.

The dogs snarled and snapped as Smith begged for help during the eight-minute call. Cowan could be heard in the background saying, “I’m dying. Can’t breathe.”

Smith told the 911 operator that the dogs had “ripped out” her throat.

A medical helicopter raced Cowan to a trauma center. Her wounds included a severed carotid artery and jugular vein, court records show. 

But the brutal attack on his girlfriend wasn’t the first time Smith had tried to stop the two pit-bull-and-Catahoua-leopard-mix dogs from savaging someone, according to an affidavit for an arrest warrant filed with the court.

On April 14, before the attack on Cowan, the same two dogs, Max and Mako, attacked fellow neighbor John Argila, according to the affidavit. 

During the investigation into Cowan’s death, Smith told deputies that he “helped get the dogs off” Argila. Later, he said, he told Cutler about her dogs’ behavior, the affidavit shows. 

Argila told investigators he’d been walking down the road near Blue Bonnet Drive a little after 10 p.m., talking on the phone and pushing his bike that had a flat tire, when he saw Max and Mako.

He yelled at them to go home. Usually, he told deputies with the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, yelling at them was enough to send the dogs—who escaped their yard daily—back within their four-foot, chain-link fence, the report shows. 

But this time, they charged. 

Argila said he tried to use his bike as a barrier, but the dogs managed to bite him on his arms. Three other dogs raced up, but didn’t bite him, he told deputies. 

Then, a passing driver pulled up and yelled at him to get into the vehicle, allowing him to escape, Argila told deputies. An ambulance took him to a local hospital for treatment for dog bites, the affidavit shows. 

Deputies noted seeing healing puncture wounds on Argila’s arms. 

Exactly five weeks later, the same two dogs attacked Cowan. Her cause of death according to the medical examiner: multiple dog bites. 

After the deadly attack, a veterinarian at the sheriff’s office Animal Care Center examined Max and Mako. She found no signs of abuse or neglect, the affidavit shows. 

Both dogs exhibited “Littermate Syndrome,” which “occurs when two puppies are raised together and fail to develop independence and normal social skills,” according to the report. 

“Because of the lack of confidence, they often react with fear or aggression toward new people, dogs, or environment,” the affidavit says. 

While investigating, deputies saw Max escape the yard through an opening in the fence. Max and Mako were set to be euthanized, a sheriff’s office spokesman told News Agency. 

During the investigation, Cutler, the dogs’ owner, told deputies she’d noticed “an increase of aggression in the dogs in the past couple months,” their report shows. She told deputies she “believed someone was doing something to her dogs to change their behavior, but was unable to elaborate on what or who.”

During a domestic incident with her boyfriend, her dogs showed aggression toward him, Cutler told deputies. She said she believed the aggression came from the dogs’ desire to protect her. 

Even though she’d installed additional fencing to keep the dogs in, she knew they still were escaping, she told deputies.

Max and Mako’s parents also acted aggressively, Cutler told deputies. About a year earlier, their mother attacked her, she said, and her boyfriend “strangled the dog to death to protect her.”

Max and Mako’s father, Boomer, also had bitten someone, which earned Cutler a citation from the Animal Services unit of the sheriff’s office, records show. 

The sheriff’s office report lists 11 complaints involving Cutler’s dogs since September 2025. One person making a complaint said the dogs killed her cat. Others complained that the dogs were running loose. Some said the dogs were chasing people and acting aggressively. Some callers expressed concern that the animals had been abandoned. 

Cutler was arrested for manslaughter on May 27, eight days after Cowan’s death.

From 2011 through 2021, there were 468 deaths in the United States that resulted from dog bites or strikes, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

In a study of pediatric dog bites, researchers found that pit bulls were the most identified breed of the 511 cases in which the dog breed was known. And pit bulls were the most commonly identified breed in cases requiring an operation, researchers said in the study published in the September 2021 edition of the Journal of Craniofacial Surgery.

Researchers wrote that “countless studies from across the country have identified pit bulls, mastiffs, German shepherds and dobermans as the most frequently identified breeds resulting in visits to the” emergency department. 

Increasingly, fatal dog bites spark spirited debate about banning some dog breeds, including pit bulls. 

But banning specific breeds of dogs isn’t the way to keep people safer, said Holly Sizemore, chief mission officer of Best Friends Animal Society. In addition to providing a large network of shelters with adoption services and other programs, the organization compiles insights and analytics from more than 10,000 shelters and rescue groups across the nation. 

“The only effective way to protect people and pets is, not through breed bans, it’s through laws that focus on the behavior of the dog and the behavior of the owner,” Sizemore told News Agency. “Breed bans waste resources. They don’t make communities safer. They don’t reduce risk.”

Nearly half of U.S. states have some form of law prohibiting or limiting breed-specific legislation at the local level, though the exact scope varies by state, said Best Friends spokeswoman Alina Hauptman. 

States that restrict local governments from enacting breed-specific legislation are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington, Hauptman said. 

Dog bite expert Michael Gould also disagrees with bans of specific breeds. He was a founding member of the New York Police Department Canine Unit and serves as an expert witness in court cases involving dogs.

Gould champions the idea of holding dog owners accountable for properly training and containing their dogs. 

He also argues that law enforcement agencies have a duty to protect communities from animals with a known history of aggression.

“Law enforcement has an overarching responsibility to provide public safety—period,” Gould said.

“Are there different laws that a sheriff or a law enforcement official has to follow? Of course. They can’t just randomly start seizing dogs … Maybe it’s the laws of this municipality that have to change.”

But, he added, “this is a public safety issue. It’s not a dog issue. I would have impounded the dogs.”

Dogs that receive proper care, are trained and are socialized as puppies don’t become dangerous, he said.

“I’ve been testifying in court for 30 years for these exact incidents, and there’s not one time I blamed the dog. It’s always a human component to it.” 

A breed ban is “feeble,” he said. “It’s archaic. It’s a Band-Aid that society wants to put on a problem, but it never addresses the core of the problem.”