Suspended sentence for owners of dogs who attacked and caused death of 87-year-old woman

While Donald Trump portrays Haitian migrants as “cat eaters”, on the other side of the globe it is the case of killer dogs which has just been closed. The facts date back to May 2020 in Tahiti, in French Polynesia, where five mastiffs “devoured alive” an 87-year-old woman, to use the words of the family’s lawyer. Four years later, their owners were given a suspended prison sentence by the Papeete criminal court, reports bfmtv.com.

The victim, attacked by a pack of five dogs, including pitbull crosses, succumbed to his injuries despite the intervention of two tennis players and then the municipal police. DNA tests were necessary to identify the body because it was so damaged.

The dogs were euthanized

The investigation revealed that four of the dogs belonged to a local family and had escaped from an unfenced garden, while the fifth was a stray. Some owners, prosecuted for destruction of evidence, had tried to clean a dog not spotted by the police with bleach.

The accused expressed their regrets, sometimes very clumsily. While the court pointed out to one of them that his dog had bitten at least two other people before the tragedy occurred, the person concerned justified that he was normal for a dog to bite. Another, still according to bfmtv.com, regretted that her dog had been euthanized even though it was, according to her, a brave animal. In French Polynesia, where the dog population is estimated at 500,000 individuals, attacks by stray dogs are common, sometimes leading to serious injuries or even, as here, deaths.

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