A violent, life-threatening dog attack in a residential neighborhood has reignited calls for urgent government intervention to address the persistent danger of uncontrolled dangerous dogs roaming public areas. Seventy-year-old Jackie Livingston Thompson is recovering from emergency surgery after he was mauled by five mixed-breed dogs while walking home from a local store around 11 p.m. last Friday.
Speaking to reporters just 48 hours after his discharge from the hospital, Thompson, still visibly marked by the attack with thick bandages wrapped around his neck, right arm and right leg, shared the terrifying details of the assault. The 70-year-old, who had occasionally fed the dogs in the past, explained that the animals – which he identified as pit bull-potcake mixes, one of which is named Trigger – split their attack: multiple dogs clamped down on his arm and leg, while the others lunged repeatedly for his neck.
Surrounded and outnumbered, Thompson said he could do nothing to fend off the pack beyond shielding his face, convinced he would not survive the encounter. “I genuinely thought I was going to die right there on the street,” he recalled. Despite crying out for assistance when the dogs’ owners arrived at the scene, Thompson said the owners simply walked away and left him bleeding on the ground. It was only a short time later that another nearby resident noticed his distress and pulled him to safety, before he was transported to a local hospital for emergency surgery on his neck wound and treatment for multiple cuts and bruises across his body.
Notably, this is not the first time the same pack has targeted Thompson; he told reporters the dogs attacked him two or three years earlier, and despite the severity of this latest assault, he has no plans to pursue criminal charges against the dogs’ owners.
Thompson’s sister, Margo Thompson, is now leading a public call for decisive action from local authorities, warning that without immediate intervention, a future attack will end in a fatal outcome. She emphasized that her brother’s small frame left him completely unable to fight off five large dogs, and that the quick action of the Good Samaritan neighbor was the only reason he survived.
“Had that neighbor not stepped in, he would be dead right now,” Margo Thompson said. “And if this can happen to him, it can happen to a child playing in the neighborhood. A child would never stand a chance against five dogs like this. The owners don’t seem to care that their animals are putting everyone at risk.”
She added that unaddressed dangerous dog attacks have become a systemic problem in the area, noting she is aware of at least four severe mauling incidents in the past 12 months that have not resulted in any meaningful regulatory action. “Police come, take a report, and then nothing happens. The report gets filed away, and the dogs are still roaming free. Until authorities step up to fix this, the problem is only going to get worse,” she said. Margo Thompson also urged local residents to speak up about dangerous unrestrained animals even when they fear retaliation from pet owners.
Tensions flared on-site during the media visit, when a female relative of Thompson got into a heated argument with a neighboring woman who claimed the Thompson family’s own unchained dog had previously attacked other people. The Thompson family firmly rejected the accusation as their dog walked freely through the yard during the exchange.
This latest attack comes just one month after another high-profile incident in the area, where 66-year-old Kemp Road resident Don Smith was hospitalized and required stitches after being mauled by a different pack of roaming dogs.