Goleta Woman Survives Attack by Two Dogs

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.

Several neighbors heard the woman screaming when she was attacked by Rosie and Chop and ran to the yard to pull the dogs off of her. They described their past encounters with the home’s dogs to the investigator, and other attacks they’d witnessed; they complained Animal Control had done nothing, the report said.

Medics had bandaged the victim’s wounds when investigators arrived, but the report noted her T-shirt was saturated with blood, she had a deep chunk missing from above her left elbow, and a sergeant had described her lip as ripped up to her nose. Blood and tissue were on the pavers in the yard.

Coronado admitted he owned the dogs but stated he was not at home at the time of the attack. Rosie was Chop’s mother, he claimed, was a year old, and had been spayed the week before. He signed the papers relinquishing them to Animal Control and also euthanasia forms. The dogs were put down that day. Their tests were negative for rabies.