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Kyleen Waltman filed a lawsuit against Abbeville Animal Services in South Carolina after she lost both arms in a vicious dog attack along a road in Honea Path in March 2022. (GoFundMe)
A woman who lost both her arms in a vicious attack by three dogs has filed a lawsuit against Abbeville Animal Services in South Carolina, claiming it did nothing to protect the public from the dangerous dogs.
Around 10:30 a.m. on March 21, 2022, Kyleen Waltman was walking down a road in Honea Path when three dogs began to attack her unprovoked. A man saw the attack unfolding as he drove his tractor and shouted at the dogs before calling 911. First responders arrived to find Waltman lying in a muddy ditch.
“The law enforcement officer observed severe lacerations to the left side of Kyleen’s neck and her right arm tricep was missing,” the lawsuit said.
Waltman was flown to a hospital in Greenville where she had both of her arms amputated. She spent seven weeks in the hospital. A GoFundMe raised over $360,000 to help with medical expenses.
The lawsuit alleges Abbeville Animal Services knew about the vicious dogs but did nothing about it. The agency received two other complaints about the dogs. On Feb. 23, 2021, a neighbor complained about the dogs coming into his yard. An animal services officer responded to the scene but only left a flyer on the door and did no follow-up, the lawsuit stated. The neighbor later told another agency he was so afraid of the dogs that he had to carry a stick with him when he walked outside.
Then, on Christmas Day 2021, a man who was visiting the home where the dogs lived was bitten in the upper thigh area and taken to the ground. He fought the dogs off and sought treatment at a hospital where a nurse reported the incident to animal services. An officer went to the home and talked to two people who denied having large dogs on their property. The officer left and did no other follow-up, the lawsuit claims.
Animal services did not follow its own policies and procedures by not investigating those prior incidents, court documents said.
“Abbeville County Animal Control Services had both the authority and a duty to properly investigate the prior complaints about the vicious dogs that attacked Kyleen. Had those complaints been properly investigated and addressed pursuant to the procedures outlined above in the County ordinance, her attack would not have happened,” the lawsuit said.
Abbeville County sheriff’s deputies arrested the dog’s owner, Justin Minor, a few days after the attack on misdemeanor charges of having dangerous animals.
Waltman’s attorneys Tombo Hite and T. Matthew Bradley told local NBC affiliate WYFF that the incident was preventable.
“This is one of the most tragic cases that I have ever seen,” Bradley said.”Tombo and I will be working tirelessly to advocate for Kyleen and to ensure that no other family has to experience what happened to Kyleen in this heartbreaking case.”
Animal services did not immediately return a call from Law&Crime seeking comment.
