PORT ANGELES — An elderly woman is recovering from severe injuries after being attacked by an American bulldog while walking to her mailbox.
The bulldog, about 9 months old, was being held at the Olympic Peninsula Humane Society shelter in Port Angeles pending euthanasia.
According to the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office, the attack happened at 8:26 p.m. last Wednesday when 73-year-old Jenelle Vivian Gilbert — a resident of Hansen Road in west Port Angeles — was walking along her driveway and encountered the bulldog and a Labrador retriever.
The dogs are owned by Gilbert’s neighbor, 43-year-old Donald Wenzl, a sergeant working for the past 17 years in the corrections division of the Sheriff’s Office.
“Jenelle was afraid, and she thought the dogs could sense it. She turned and attempted to run up her steep driveway, but her hand was grabbed by the bulldog, which pulled her to the ground [and] started to bite her all over,” Sheriff’s Deputy Brandon Stoppani said in his report on the attack.
The Labrador retriever was not involved in the attack and stood nearby barking, the report said.
The bulldog caused serious injuries, including puncture wounds above each eye, before Gilbert was able to get away.
She also sustained possible bone or muscular damage to her forearm, her skin was torn from the back of her hand with bone and tendons visible; and there were punctures to the wrist and lacerations to fingers, the report said.
On the left arm, she suffered lacerations to the back of the hand and fingers.
Gilbert also sustained several punctures to the shins of both legs.
Wenzl and his family “are just devastated,” he told the PDN Monday.
“We have been friends with [Gilbert] for a good eight years. She clips newspaper clippings out for my kids and brings us jam and everything. It is not the dog we are devastated about. It is the fact that we couldn’t do anything to help her.”
Wenzl’s children have been going to her house every day since the attack to feed her cats and look after her plants, he said.
“I am doing what I can to get this taken care of for her, because she is a great lady.”
Gilbert said Monday she was treated at Olympic Medical Center and released last Thursday, and she has declined to comment publicly about the attack.
Following the attack, Gilbert was transported to the hospital where, at 8:47 p.m., she was met by Stoppani.
“Jenelle was laying on a bed with wounds to her head, arms, hands and legs,” Stoppani stated in the report.
Gilbert recounted the event and noted that the bulldog had attempted to bite her once before on an unspecified date, leaving her pants ripped.
Stoppani phoned Wenzl and requested that the bulldog be secured before meeting him at his residence.
During the meeting, Wenzl said he was downstairs watching TV and was unaware of the dog attack until informed of it by Stoppani.
“We were in the basement at the time, and basically my stomach went in knots and my heart sank. My kids are really affected too,” Wenzl said Monday.
Following the phone call, he went outside and found the bulldog — which he has owned for about five months — on his porch and still wearing a tether.
However, the tether was no longer connected to a spike in the ground about 10 feet away.
Wenzl had bought the tether and screwed the spike into the ground after the bulldog had previously attempted to bite Gilbert, checking to make sure it could securely hold the dog.
But the bulldog was able to pull free and attack Gilbert when she approached her mailbox near Wenzl’s driveway.
“The spike was tilted toward the entrance of the driveway and the ring that holds the tether to the spike was bent open, allowing the tether to come loose,” the report said.
The attack remains under investigation, the Sheriff’s Office said.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.
