A 76-year-old Florida woman bled to death last year after a pit bull tore into her leg while she was dog-sitting.
That was someone's mother – and now two more of these dogs are in a Miami-Dade shelter after nearly killing a 63-year-old woman on a Homestead street.
And a Florida man ran into a Pit Bull attack and did something most people would never do.
The Moment Alex Hernandez Decided to Move
Alex Hernandez was working near the 200 block of Northwest Ninth Terrace in Homestead on September 12 when he heard the barking and then the screaming.
He ran.
"I saw the two dogs on top of her," Hernandez said. "I was able to run over at them and scream and they luckily let go."
Witness Cobi Brooks described what the woman looked like when the dogs backed off.
"Her skull was showing," Brooks said. "She had holes in her arms and her legs and the back of her legs. She was really tore up."
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue flew the woman to Jackson South Medical Center by helicopter.
She survived.
She went into surgery and was listed in stable condition as of the weekend.
"I helped her up and took her inside, put her on a chair, and she was just bleeding everywhere," Hernandez said. "That's just God putting me in the right place at the right time."
The Dogs Were Already Known to Neighbors
This is where it stops being a feel-good story.
Neighbor Domingo Perez told reporters he had seen those dogs loose before.
"I see the dog on the outside sometimes," Perez said. "The dog is coming out and walking here. I take my bar because maybe the dog is coming here. I need it as defense."
This man kept a metal bar on hand because he already knew what those dogs could do.
No one was arrested.
The two pit bulls – identified by law enforcement as pit bulls – are now in the custody of Miami-Dade Animal Services.
That is where this ends, for now.
The dogs get a kennel.
The woman gets surgery.
The owner faces no charges.
And the neighbors who watched those animals roam free are left to wonder what happens next time.
While the Advocacy Groups Argued Breed, the Body Count Kept Rising
Pit bulls are responsible for 67% of all fatal dog attacks in the United States over the 16-year period from 2005 to 2020, according to DogsBite.org tracking data.
In 2024 alone, dogs killed 127 Americans – the highest single-year total ever recorded by CDC data, a 165% jump from 48 deaths in 2019.
The death toll has now exceeded 70 for three consecutive years.
Florida has seen some of the worst of it.
Alicia Malagon, 76, of Fountain died after a pit bull at her daughter's home turned on her when she tried to separate it from her small dachshund.
In Marion County, an 82-year-old woman was killed after a pack of seven pit bulls got loose from a neighbor's property and attacked her in her own yard.
https://twitter.com/ThayzzySmith/status/2099540886082195593?s=20
Meanwhile, animal advocacy groups have spent years arguing that breed matters less than ownership.
Tell that to Cobi Brooks, who watched a woman's skull get exposed on a residential street in broad daylight.
Tell that to Domingo Perez, who carries a metal bar to his mailbox.
Tell that to Alex Hernandez, who charged two animals that had already torn through someone's neck and arm – and saved a life.
He heard someone screaming, and he ran toward them.
We used to call that a normal thing for American men to do.
Sources:
- Samiar Nefzi and Andrea Torres, "Man describes how he rescued woman from 2 dogs' jaws during attack caught on video in Miami-Dade," Local 10 / WPLG, September 12, 2026.
- "Woman, 63, injured in dog attack in Homestead, cops say," Local 10 / WPLG, September 11, 2026.
- DogsBite.org, "16-Year U.S. Dog Bite Fatality Report, 2005–2020," Dogsbite.org.
- CDC Wonder Provisional Data, Fatal Dog Attack Fatalities 2019–2024, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- "Pit bull kills elderly dog sitter after attacking dachshund," WJHG / AP, Fountain, Florida.
- "Pit bulls kill Florida woman," AP / NBC News, Marion County, Florida.
