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Pit bull kills trainer as U.K. groups seek repeal of Dangerous Dogs Act 1991

August 20, 2022 By Merritt Clifton

Pit bull

(Beth Clifton collage)

Second of three fatal or disfiguring U.K. dog attacks in a week

FAREHAM, Hampshire,  U.K.––Dog walker and trainer Ian “Wiggy” Symes,  34,  by both family and police accounts a canine handling expert,  was on the morning of August 10,  2022 killed in a facial attack by an out-of-control “American Bully XL” pit bull belonging to a 20-year-old man.

Symes,  who had worked with pit bulls and Rottweilers,  and appears to have bred Rottweilers,  was attacked while walking a non-bully breed dog at the Fareham Park Recreation Ground.

The 20-year-old owner of the “American Bully XL” was reportedly detained but released on “suspicion of being the owner/person in charge of a dog dangerously out of control causing injury resulting in death,”  wrote Portsmouth News senior reporter Steve Deeks.

The “American Bully XL” was impounded at the scene.

Wiggy Symes with two of his Rottweilers

Wiggy Symes with two of his Rottweilers.
(Facebook photo)

Record eighth U.K. dog fatality of 2022

Symes was the eighth U.K. dog attack fatality of 2022,  in what was already a record-breaking year for fatal dog attacks,  the third victim of an “American Bully XL,”  and the fifth victim of pit bulls mislabeled as something else,  to evade the narrow definitions of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991,  passed by Parliament 31 years less a day before Symes’ death.

Even as Symes died with “horrific facial injuries,”  in the words of a young mother who with her daughter were witnesses to the attack,  according to Jack Wright and Lizzie May of the Daily Mail,  the misleadingly named “Dog Control Coalition” electronically spammed out yet another of many media releases issued over the years urging Parliament to “repeal breed specific legislation.”

English Staffordshire pit bull

Staffordshire pit bull.  (Beth Clifton collage)

“Pit-pushers coalition”

The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991,  the “Dog Control Coalition” argues,  “sentences dogs to death simply because they look a certain way,”  specifically like an American pit bull terrier,  a Japanese tosa,  a Dogo Argentino,  or a Fila Brasiliero,  all of them prohibited pit bull variants.

Members of the “Dog Control Coalition” include the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home,  the Blue Cross,  Dogs Trust,  the Kennel Club,  the Royal SPCA,  the Scottish SPCA,  and the British Veterinary Association.

Five of these organizations have vested interests in rehoming pit bulls.  Three [at least] profit by treating pit bulls and the other animals they injure.  One profits by registering pit bulls under various guises.

None have a clear mandate to promote public safety.

America's dog and gun

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Status dogs” arms race

Pit bulls,  meanwhile,  labeled anything else,  have only proliferated since the passage of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991,  flooding British shelters with impounded or abandoned pit bulls.  This pattern is the same as has occurred over the same three decades in the U.S. and most of the rest of the world,  in absence of legislation which effectively prohibits breeding and selling pit bulls no matter what they are called,  prohibits rehoming pit bulls who have not been sterilized,  and at least seriously discourages acquisition of other dogs of dangerous reputation.

Fatal and disfiguring dog attacks,  in the United Kingdom as elsewhere,  have soared parallel to pit bull proliferation.  But pit bulls are not the only dogs involved,  as breeding “status dogs” has become an arms race.

Pit bull & Doberman

(Beth Clifton collage)

Doberman & pit/mastiff mix

Just one day before Symes was killed in Fareham,  Deeks of the Portsmouth News reported,  a Doberman severely mauled a three-year-old girl in Leigh Park,  eleven miles east.  The Doberman owner was arrested but released on bail.

Three days later,  an apparent pit bull/mastiff mix inflicted serious injuries to the head and face of a four-year-old boy in the Norris Green district of Liverpool.  The 31-year-old female owner of the pit/mastiff was,  like the Doberman owner,   arrested “on suspicion of being in possession of a dangerously out-of-control dog.”

A 33-year-old man was arrested on the same charge,  in connection with the same attack,  four days after the woman.

Winston Churchhill with pit bulls

English bulldogs on the ends. Olde English bull dogs in the center.
(Beth Clifton collage)

17% rise in dog attacks in just one year

The National Hospital Service of the United Kingdom on August 8,  2022 released data showing that hospital admissions for dog bites and other injuries caused by dogs increased by 17% in the fiscal year 2021-2022,  to 8,655 admissions, up from 7,424 in 2020-21.

Royal Mail data released a month earlier showed that there were 1,673 dog attacks on mail carriers in the United Kingdom in 2021,  a third as many as in the U.S.,  but U.S. mail carriers serve more than five times as many addresses.

University of Liverpool veterinary epidemiologist John Tulloch speculated to media that the surge in dog attacks “was most likely to have been a statistical anomaly,”  and noted that “the rate of dog bites against children stayed static in the years between 1998 and 2018,  though they had tripled in adults,”  a pattern similar to the dog attack trend lines that ANIMALS 24-7 has documented in the U.S. and Canada since 1982.

Redneck hillbilly with pit bulls and marijuana

(Beth Clifton collage)

U.S. & Canadian data shows similar trend

The U.S. and Canadian data shows rising numbers of fatal and disfiguring dog attacks on both children and adults,  but with a much steeper rise among adults.

The simplest,  most obvious explanation for this is that the U.S. pit bull population has quadrupled since 1982,  while a pit bull “grapples his opponents without in the least estimating their comparative weight and powers,  as Lieutenant Colonel Charles Hamilton Smith explained in The Natural History of Dogs, published in 1839-1840 by W.H. Lizars of Edinburgh, Scotland.

This was the book that established the basis of most of the breed standards still used by the Kennel Club today.

Dr. Alan Billings

Police & Crime Commissioner Alan Billings.
(South Yorkshire Police photo)

Police & Crime Commissioner issues warning

Tulloch alleged,  like the “Dog Control Coalition,”  that no dog breed is more dangerous than any other,  but South Yorkshire Police & Crime Commissioner and Anglican priest Alan Billings,  80,  on August 17,  2022 pointed out the obvious to Yorkshire Post senior reporter Nathan Hyde.

Regardless of what the attacking dogs are called,  Billings observed,  they typically “look like versions of pit bull terriers.  The warning signs are clearly there:  if in their heritage is a dog that at one time was prized because it could be trained to attack, that aggression may be latent;  and who knows what might trigger it into action?

“I am sorry for those who find themselves confronted by such a dog,”  Billings said.  “And I don’t think it is a pleasant duty for officers when they are called to such incidents and have to deal with the animals.

Little girl and a pit bull

(Beth Clifton collage)

“They can turn in an instant”

“We sorely need a national campaign to persuade people who are contemplating acquiring this type of dog,  especially where they have children,  to think again,”  Billings emphasized.  “However friendly and affectionate,  they can turn in an instant.”

“The attacks in South Yorkshire have not only been on strangers,”  Billings reminded Hyde,   “but have also included dogs turning on their owners or other family members.

“Children and babies have been bitten and we can only imagine what might have happened if adults had not been around to distract the dogs or pull them away.

“It is not unusual,”  Billings finished,  “for the owners to say they couldn’t understand why the dog suddenly attacked,  because they were normally so friendly and playful.”

United Kingdom dog attack fatalities

since introduction of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991,  to 8-10-2022

(55 total,  70 dogs involved, 58 of them [83%] pit bull-type dogs [shown in red],
20 of the nominally prohibited pit bulls exempted as “Staffordshires.” 
See “English bulldog”: two dog breeds, one name, & a rising body count.)

U.K. dog attack victim         Age             Date                 Dog


2022
Ian “Wiggy” Symes         34 years   08-10-2022   American bully XL
Joanne Robinson           43 years   07-15-2022   American bully XL
Keven Jones               62 years   05-23-2022   American bulldog (pit bull)
Daniel Twigg               3 years   05-15-2022   Cane Corso
Lawson Bond                2 years   03-28-2022   3 Rottweilers
Bella-Rae Birch           17 months  03-21-2022   American bully XL 
Kyra Leanne King          03 months  03-06-2022   Husky
John William Jones        68 years   01-10-2022   3 “British bulldogs”

2021
Adam Watts                55 years   12-22-2021   Pit bull
Jack Lis                  10 years   11-08-2021   American bully XL
Lucille Downer            85 years   04-02-2021   2 pit bulls
Keira Ladlow              25 years   02-05-2021   Staffordshire

2020
Jonny Halstead            35 years   01-29-2020   Staffordshire 

2019
Elayne Stanley            44 years   09-24-2019   2 pit bulls
Sharon Jennings *         55 years   06-10-2019   Pit bull 
Frankie Macritchie         9 years   04-13-2019   Pit bull

2018
Reuben Malachi McNulty     5 weeks   11-18-2018   2 Staffordshires

2017
Mario Perivoitos          41 years   03-20-2017   Staffordshire

2016
Archie Joe Darby          04 months  10-14-2016   Staffordshire
Dexter Neal               03 years   08-21-2016   Pit bull
David Ellam               52 years   08-16-2016   Staffordshire
Stephen Hodgson           45 years   05-22-2016   Staffordshire/pit mix
Liam Hewitson             22 years   01-01-2016   Legal "pit bull mix”

2015
Bill George               68 years   10-09-2015   Pit bull (sepsis)
Irene Collins             73 years   09-04-2015   GSD/spaniel mix
Reggie Young              03 weeks   06-20-2015   Patterdale terrier
Rhona Greve               64 years   03-20-2015   Pit bull

2014
Lexi Branson               4 years   11-04-2014   Bull mastiff
Molly Mae Wotherspoon      6 month   08-03-2014   Pit bull
Eliza Mae Malone           6 days    02-18-2014   Malamute
Ava Jane Corliss          11 months  02-10-2014   Pit bull
Barry Walsh               46 years   01-09-2014   Staffordshire

2013
Emma Bennett              27 years   12-11-2013   Staffordshire & pit bull
Lexie Hudson               5 years   11-05-2013   French mastiff
                                                  (Doge du Bordeaux)
Leslie Lawn *2             40 years   09-15-2013   2 Staffordshires
Clifford Clarke           79 years   05-26-2013   Staffordshire/
                                                     bull mastiff mix
Jade Lomas-Anderson       14 years   03-26-2013   2 Staffordshires, 
                                                  2 bull mastiffs
2012
Harry Harper              01 weeks   11-21-2012   Jack Russell
Gloria Knowles            71 years   10-30-2012   2 French mastiffs,
                               2 American bull dogs, one “small mongrel"
Brian Cruse *3            78 years   09-20-2012   Pit bull

2011
Leslie Trotman *4        83 years   01-23-2011   Pit bull

2010
Barbara Williams          52 years   12-24-2010   Cane corso
Zumer Ahmed               18 months  04-17-2010   Pit bull

2009
John Paul Massey          04 years   11-30-2009   Pit bull
Oluwaseyi Ogunyemi *5     16 years   04-27-2009   2 Staffordshire
Jaden Mack                 3 months  02-06-2009   Staffordshire & 
                                                     Jack Russell
2008
James Rehill              78 years   01-27-2008   Rottweiler
2007
Archie-Lee Andrew Hirst   13 months  12-28-2007   Rottweiler
Ellie Lawrenson            5 years   01-01-2007   Pit bull
Cadey-Lee Deacon           5 months  09-24-2006   2 Rottweilers

2005
Liam Eames                 1 year    07-11-2005   American bulldog

2003
George Dinham             45 years   05-16-2003   Staffordshire

2000
Kirsty Ross               25 years   07-11-2000   Doberman

1996
David Kearney             11 years   01-03-1996   2 Rottweilers

1994
Ashley Wilson              1 month   12-22-1994   Staffordshire

1993
Dean Parker                7 years   11-21-1993   Pit bull

Beth and Merritt

Merritt, Teddy, & Beth Clifton.

*  Broke up fight at dog park;  died of sepsis.
*2 No evident cause of death;  coroner claimed dogs dismembered remains after death.
*3  Suffered fatal head injury responsible for the death.
*4  Died of injuries six days after the attack.
*5  Dogs disabled the victim on command; Chrisdain Johnson,  22,  was convicted of subsequently stabbing him to death.

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Filed Under: Breeding, Dog attacks, Dogs, Dogs & Cats, Europe, Feature Home Bottom, Isles, United Kingdom Tagged With: Alan Billings, Dog Control Coalition, Ian “Wiggy” Symes, John Tulloch, Merritt Clifton, Nathan Hyde, Steve Deeks

Comments

  1. Anne Kasica says

    August 20, 2022 at 11:57 am

    The RSPCA in the UK originally campaigned for the introduction of the Dangerous Dogs Act. When it was passed they prosecuted using it. They have now, for whatever reason, changed their minds and want the BSL part of it removed.

    In the UK most post boxes are part of the front door to the house, and when the postman puts letters in the slot the dog can reach his fingers. If there is a drive or path to the house he usually has to walk up it to the front door. I think that in the US it is more likely that post boxes are at the edge of the property and so the postman is less likely to come into contact with the dogs? This could explain the differences in postal workers getting bitten.

  2. Izzy says

    August 31, 2022 at 6:02 pm

    The whole country went out and bought a dog in the lockdown. The government even changed the rules of lockdown so that dog breeders were allowed to deliver puppies. Rescues of course remained shut and are now overflowing with the victims of that ridiculous period.

    So much land is being lost to building that there are more dogs crammed into less space.

    Dog owners are literally blamed for everything. They get criticised for walking them in hot weather, for not walking them, for walking off lead, for not letting their dog off lead, for wildlife etc etc. So many people have actually no idea what to do for the best.

    It stands to reason that there will be more attacks. The entire country has been under a mass psychological attack for two and a half years, dogs pick up on stress. Most people have no idea how to be a good dog owner. They dominate the animal’s entire life until they go outside and then they let it lead them everywhere, take control and they are terrified to discipline it. Poor dogs, no wonder they don’t know whether they are coming or going.

    It is interesting that at least two of the recent attacks involved someone having a heart attack/seizure first. But of course it is easiest to say it is a dog attack. That way they can ban them in the name of public safety.

    • Merritt Clifton says

      August 31, 2022 at 6:31 pm

      Eighteen of the 941 fatal dog attacks occurring in the U.S. and Canada since 1982, just under 2%, have involved victims suffering heart attacks under duress of being attacked by a dog. Eleven of those 18 dog attacks triggering fatal heart attacks were by pit bulls (61%), which is practically identical to the rate of pit bull involvement (589 of 941, 62%) in all other fatal dog attacks.

      • Izzy says

        September 1, 2022 at 8:26 am

        Thanks – I should have clarified that my comment was about Britain, apologies!

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