Jodi Cowan was walking her dog at 2 a.m. when two dogs climbed a fence and tore her apart in front of her neighborhood.
Her husband ran outside with a knife and tried to stop it.
She died four hours later – and the woman who owned those dogs had one question for investigators when she found out.
What Linda Cutler Said After Jodi Cowan Died
She wanted to know when she could get her dogs back.
That detail – confirmed by Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey – tells you everything you need to know about how this happened.
Linda Cutler, 29, knew her dogs Max and Mako escaped regularly and had bitten someone before.
She admitted both in a sworn interview.
She also acknowledged the dogs had grown increasingly aggressive – even toward her.
Animal enforcement officers had cited Cutler multiple times for the dogs being loose.
None of it was enough under Florida law to seize the animals.
Not the citations. Not the prior bite. Not the neighbor complaints going back to 2024.
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Sheriff Ivey put it plainly: "Even if a dog has previously bitten someone and it's not a severe bite, the most action our animal enforcement officers are allowed by law to take is the issuance of a citation and a fine."
A woman is dead because Florida law treated a known, repeatedly escaping, aggressive dog like a parking ticket problem.
The Sheriff Had Four Words for Her
Investigators arrested Cutler at a Melbourne Beach Hilton – where she had been staying while Jodi Cowan's family buried her.
Sheriff Ivey personally walked her through the jail doors.
Cutler looked at him and asked, "OK, um, what is the purpose of that?"
Ivey looked right back at her: "A woman is dead and two dogs are about to be euthanized because of your uselessness."
Cutler now faces a manslaughter charge and was ordered held without bond.
The dogs remain in quarantine and are expected to be euthanized.
This Is Not an Isolated Story – Florida Just Rewrote Its Laws Over It
Jodi Cowan is not the first person to die this way in Florida.
In August 2022, postal worker Pamela Rock was mauled to death by five dogs that escaped a fenced yard in Putnam County.
Those dogs had attacked people at least four times before.
Their owner had repeatedly tried to surrender them to animal control.
Nobody followed up. No charges were ever filed.
Rock's death finally forced Florida lawmakers to act.
The Pam Rock Act went into effect July 1, 2025 – less than a year before Jodi Cowan was killed.
https://twitter.com/AmericanCrime01/status/2057602143926833504?s=20
The new law requires – not merely authorizes – animal control to immediately confiscate any dog that has killed a human being or delivered a bite scoring 5 or higher on the Dunbar scale.
It mandated dangerous dog liability insurance and created a statewide registry.
But the Pam Rock Act did not close every gap.
The law still requires a severe enough bite before mandatory seizure kicks in.
Max and Mako had bitten someone before killing Jodi Cowan – but not severely enough to trigger removal under that threshold.
Florida fixed part of the problem. The part it left open killed Jodi Cowan.
What Responsible Pet Ownership Actually Means
This is not a story about bad dogs.
Dogs escape. Dogs can be aggressive. Every owner knows this.
https://twitter.com/IAmyLeigh/status/2060140094565077316?s=20
This is a story about a 29-year-old woman who knew her dogs were dangerous, knew the fence had holes, watched the citations stack up – and did nothing.
She collected them the way some people collect speeding tickets: a minor inconvenience to be ignored.
Meanwhile, Jodi Cowan got up before dawn to walk her dog – the responsible thing, the normal thing, the thing millions of Americans do every single morning – and was overpowered and dragged across the ground until she couldn't survive it.
Neighbor Dominica Midkiff told reporters the dogs were "always on the loose."
Everybody knew except the one person with the legal obligation to do something about it.
A manslaughter charge and no bond is the right call.
So is asking whether the Pam Rock Act needs another update before the next Jodi Cowan.
Sources:
- "Deadly Cocoa dog attack: Arrest made in neighbor's mauling death," Fox 35 Orlando, May 27, 2026.
- "Brevard woman arrested after fatal dog mauling that killed neighbor walking her dog," WFTV/Yahoo News, May 28, 2026.
- "Sharpes woman whose 2 dogs killed neighbor charged with manslaughter," Florida Today/Yahoo News, May 28, 2026.
- "'Because of your uselessness': Florida woman arrested in connection to fatal dog attack, sheriff says," WFLA, May 28, 2026.
- "New Dangerous Breed Liability Laws in Florida," Gould Cooksey Fennell, September 15, 2025.
