A woman is seeking justice for her husband who died after suffering extreme injuries after being attacked by three dogs. According to the dog owner, this wasn’t the first time his dogs sunk their teeth into someone.
Shauntaye Phillips retained an attorney on behalf of her husband, Harold, who suffered the brutal attack on Jan 29. She told FOX 2 News the 35-year-old was walking home from the bus stop on W Chicago and Longacre after taking a trip to the mall. She said he had bought clothes for an interview for a new job. However, his stride home was interrupted by three dogs that emerged from a yard and ambushed him, she told the outlet.
Roy Goodman, the dog owner, told ABC 7 Detroit he had been looking for his dogs after noticing they got loose. When he suddenly heard a bystander yelling for help down the block from his home, he said that’s when he called 911.
Phillips lawsuit states her husband was bit in the groin, head, back, legs but most severely on his right arm.
“The dogs bit a pretty big hole out of his arm and tore his artery, so he lost a lot of blood. He is on dialysis. He has to keep getting transfusions. They cut off his right arm,” Shauntaye Phillips told CBS later after Harold was hospitalized.
A Fatherhood Cut Short
His eight-year-old daughter, one of six children, celebrated her birthday at the hospital while her dad laid in a medically induced coma, CBS reported. However, after a week of fighting for his life, his condition worsened and his organs began shutting down, Phillips told reporters. She updated the status on her GoFundMe campaign Tuesday telling the hundreds of people who donated that her husband died after succumbing to his injuries.
“It’s painful to think of all the important milestones Harold will miss in our children’s lives, from our son’s first basketball game this weekend to our daughter’s upcoming daddy-daughter dance that he was looking forward to. Our lives will never be the same,” she wrote in the statement.
As for Mr. Goodman, his three dogs were euthanized and his fourth one was seized by Detroit Animal Care and Control. The agency’s records show that this wasn’t even the first time Goodman’s dogs got into some mess. It was the fourth.
Read more from ABC 7 Detroit:
According to animal control, in 2021, when one of the dogs belonging to the Goodmans bit a child, we’re told it was determined that the dog bite was “provoked” and animal control classified the injury as “non-severe.” The dog was quarantined and returned to the couple and they were fined, according to a spokesperson for Detroit Animal Care and Control, who added that the same dog was one of the three involved in Monday’s attack on Harold Phillips.
Court records show that in January 2021, Roy Goodman was charged with failing to prevent an animal from engaging in nuisance/menacing behavior, a misdemeanor. He pleaded guilty but for some reason, the case was dismissed later that year. Roy Goodman told 7 Action News that in addition to the child being bitten, he said a contractor was also bitten as well as another adult on another occasion. The attack on Phillips was the fourth incident.
Along with his wife, Goodman faces multiple violations for not having licensed dogs, not having proof of their rabies vaccines and also two-too-many dogs in their house according to the city law, the report says. These counts could cost them thousands of dollars in fines
“To the Phillips family, I’m so sorry. Nothing I can do can make this right but if there’s anything I can do, I will,” Goodman told ABC before Phillips was pronounced dead. “I could lose everything and even if I lose everything, to save his life would be worth it.”
