
(Beth Clifton collage)
Tennessee attack killed two children and left mother in critical condition
MEMPHIS, LUBBOCK, LIVERPOOL, GQERBERHA––Five fatal pit bull attacks in nine days and three nations––the U.S., the United Kingdom, and South Africa––ended September and opened October 2022.
Three victims were children. All but one of the victims were members of the households of experienced pit bull owners.
Killed on October 5, 2022 in Millington, Tennessee, just east of Memphis, were five-month-old Hollace Dean Bennard and two-year-old Lilly Jane Bennard.
The two deceased were the only children of Kirstie Jane Bennard, 30, also known as Christi Bennard, and Hollace Colby Bennard, 34, usually called Colby Bennard.
Kirstie Jane Bennard, formerly Satterfield, also has a son by a previous marriage.


Mother now in “stable” condition
Injured while trying to save the children, transported to hospital in Memphis in critical condition, Kirstie Jane Bennard had reportedly improved to stable condition during the next 24 hours.
Relatives told media and posted to social media that Kirstie Jane Bennard had an “uncountable amount of stitches and bite marks over her entire body, including her face,” and that “both her ‘arms and legs are bandaged/wrapped up completely,” but Gibson reportedly did not believe she would suffer “any permanent damage.”
Both pit bulls involved in the attack were impounded by Memphis Animal Services. Both were euthanized on October 6, 2022.
Kirstie Jane Bennard reportedly worked as a respiratory therapist.
Colby Bennard, assistant manager for Bumpus Harley-Davidson dealership in Colierville, another Memphis suburb, was unharmed and is believed to have been at work when the pit bull attack occurred.


“House lions”
“Eight years ago,” reported Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling for the Reuters news service, “Colby Bennard shared a photo of two pit bulls [via social media] and referred to them as ‘house lions’, although it’s unclear if these are the killer pets.”
Kirstie Jane Bennard meanwhile used a photo of the two pit bulls who killed her children as her Facebook cover image.
Altogether, the Bennards appear to have kept at least three pit bulls during their five-year marriage.
Fumed Kelsey Gallini Canfield, identified as Kirstie Jane Bennard’s best friend, in a Facebook posting, “Why does something so traumatic and unimaginable have to be so publicized? Just to stir the pot on the war on pit bulls? You’re disgusting.”


(Beth Clifton collage)
First casualties
Gallini overlooked that the first casualties of the “war” in her best friend’s home were the best friend’s two babies and the best friend herself, and that the babies were killed and the best friend was mauled into critical condition because the Bennards disregarded the lessons that they should have learned from 175 U.S. pit bull fatalities and 1,680 disfigurements just during the brief duration of their marriage.
(See Dog attack deaths & maimings, U.S. & Canada, 1982-2021 log.)
Former Memphis pit bull breeder Marlo Matthews took a distinctly different view.
“I know how loyal pit bulls can be. I know how loving they can be,” Matthews told Jordan James and Autumn Scott of WREG, “but I also know how dangerous they can be.”


“You are playing with your life”
“Matthews has spent the last decade as a dog breeder. But he recently decided to get out of the industry out of concern for his children’s safety,” James and Scott explained.
Said Matthews, “You are playing with your life when you have those in your house. Something may never happen, but when it does, will you then be like ‘I should have gotten rid of this problem?’
“Something has to be done,” Matthews continued.
“A mandate, an ordinance, something has to be enforced to train these parents that these animals are far too dangerous to take the gamble [of having pit bulls] around small children.”


Jack Looney
Hollace Dean Bennard and Lilly Jane Bennard died eight days after police in Lubbock, Texas, responded to an early morning pit bull attack on a woman at the Buddy Holly Lake Recreational Area.
Three pit bulls were captured at the scene.
A photojournalist who also responded to the police scanner call found the nearby remains of Jack Looney, 64, mauled to death on a late night walk hours earlier.
A local Democratic Party precinct captain, Looney was known to be a frequent late night walker.
Jack Looney was the third U.S. pit bull fatality of September 2022.
Rusty Shane Burris, 32, of Old Fort, Tennessee, was killed on September 9, 2022 by a dog described by the Polk County Sheriff’s Department as an “alligator” pit pull.
Mary Elizabeth Gehring, 88, of Golden, Colorado, died on September 17, 2022, three days after a family pit bull after two family pit bulls mauled Gehring and her 12-year-old grandson.


Third Lubbock-area dog attack fatality in 10 months
Looney was also the third Lubbock-area dog attack fatality in ten months.
Andrew Woods, 57, on June 10, 2022 reportedly died from a suspected heart attack while under attack by three pit bulls in Anton, a suburb west of Lubbock. Woods also suffered multiple bites.
Braylyn B. Culver-Green, 3, was killed in Lubbock on November 11, 2021.
There were also two pit bull fatalities in Lubbock in 2019. Five pit bulls killed Johnnie Mae Gardner, 88, on February 27, 2019. Only twelve days later a man reportedly in his thirties, whose identity was not disclosed, died from a “medical condition” while intervening in a pit bull attack on another dog.
Before that, the last fatal dog attack in the vicinity was the August 30, 2006 death of an unidentified homeless man, 49, who was killed by two female pit bulls kept at a junkyard near Spur, an outlying suburb east of Lubbock.


Pit bull breeder killed by her own dogs
Pit bull breeder Ann Dunn, 65, described by Natasha Anderson of MailOnLine based on relatives’ descriptions as “a lovely and funny grandmother,” was on October 4, 2022 “fatally mauled inside her home on St. Brigid’s Crescent in Vauxhall at her “dog breeding property” near Liverpool, United Kingdom.
“Dunn, who worked as a cleaner at Liverpool John Moores University,” Anderson summarized, “required hospital treatment in August 2021 after suffering a number of bites from a large dog, resulting in non-life-threatening injuries, The Liverpool Echo reported.
“It is unclear if the dog that attacked her last summer was involved in her death.
Dunn’s remains were discovered, Anderson continued, after she “did not turn up to collect her grandson from school.”


Dangerous Dogs Act 1991
Added Dunn, “American bulldogs, which were the breed of dog found in the home, are not one of the four breeds currently banned in the U.K.”
The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 explicitly prohibits possession of four “foreign” pit bull variants, the American pit bull terrier, Japanese tosa, Dogo Argentino, and Fila Brasiliero, but allows pit bulls by any other name, including “American bulldog” and “Staffordshire,” both of which are essentially the same dog as an “American pit bull terrier.”
Dunn was the ninth U.K. dog attack fatality of 2022. The seventh dog attack fatality of 2022 broke the previous national record for one year. Dunn was the sixth 2022 victim of pit bulls who were mislabeled as something else, to evade the narrow definitions of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.
(See Pit bull kills trainer as U.K. groups seek repeal of Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.)
Furious response from pit bull advocates
Responding to Dunn’s death, and other recent pit bull attacks, The Mirror editorially appealed for the Dangerous Dogs Act to be amended to “Widen the list of banned breeds to make it illegal to own, breed or sell other dangerous types; bring in a new law requiring owners to register certain breeds that could be dangerous,” similar to laws already in effect in France and Austria, and require that, “Anyone wanting to own a potentially dangerous breed should attend a training course and the dog’s behavior should be assessed.”
This predictably drew a furious open letter in response from a “Dog Control Coalition” including 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.


Ten-year-old killed in his home
Meanwhile in the Gelvandale suburb of Gqerberha, South Africa, the city formerly called Port Elizabeth, ten-year-old Storm Nuku was on September 26, 2022 killed by two family pit bulls while playing with two other children inside his home.
Police shot both pit bulls, but too late to save Storm Nuku.
Recalled Megan van den Heever of The South African, “In February 2022, a Potchefstroom domestic worker barely survived after she was attacked by her boss’s three pit bulls,” who “ripped off the woman’s nose, lips, ears, and thighs.
“Last month, René Memmel – a seasoned runner – was mauled by two pit bulls belonging to his neighbors whilst on a morning run in Edenvale, Johannesburg.”
These attacks and many others prompted Pit Bull Federation of South Africa spokesperson Lins Rautenbach to repeat a warning the federation has often issued since 2015 that people should not buy or adopt pit bulls as family pets.


Pit Bull Federation of South Africa
Acknowledged Rautenbach, “We do have a problem in South Africa, and unfortunately the very people who claim to be tasked with preventing this are actually exacerbating the problem.”
Summarized van den Heever, “Rautenbach stated that several key players like backyard breeders, irresponsible owners, rehabilitation centers, and even people who organize dog fights contributed to the dogs’ violent nature.”
Explained Rautenbach, “There is no excuse for a mauling and no victim deserves to be mauled. You cannot rehabilitate a poor temperament. Seventy-seven percent of maulings come from the family dog or a dog known to the victim.
“There is no place in society at all for a dog that exhibits human-directed aggression.”


Added van den Heever, “Rautenbach revealed that pit bulls who are easily accessible do not have a sound temperament and are ultimately a ‘recipe for disaster.’”
Of 45 known South African dog attack fatalities occurring since 2004, pit bulls have inflicted 33, or 73%.
Sharing with gratitude and *PRAYERS* for the victims, as well as for those who still don’t get it, to WAKE UP.
Pitbull nannies. This is a new one. Thanks for the post.
See Misunderstood Nanny Dogs
and Where the and Late Bernie Rollin got his Garbled “Facts” About Pit Bulls
Staffordshire Bull Terriers are NOT essentially the same breed as pit bulls, they could not actually be a lot less like and STILL be a bull breed! AmStaffs are pit bulls and you are confusing the breeds. Please get it right as it makes it difficult to use you as a credible source. Sure SBT come under the “umbrella” but so do Boston Terriers!
As ANIMALS 24-7 has often pointed out, there is no primary source placing “Staffordshire” dogs of any sort in the United Kingdom before dogfighter James P. Colby of Newburyport, Massachusetts began breeding his pit bulls in 1888, soon afterward using the name “Staffordshire” to sell his culls, occasionally to British dogfighters but mostly within the U.S.
The earliest reference to a “Staffordshire” dog in the U.K. at NewspaperArchive.com, which includes complete full text of 818 British newspapers published from 1607 to present, repeatedly searched again just today, appears in an 1896 Daily Mail classified ad offering to trade the dog “for anything useful.” The only other mention of a “Staffordshire bull terrier” or even just “Staffordshire terrier” prior to the introduction of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 is a single 1964 classified ad placed by a Liverpool breeder.
The Boston terrier debuted in print in the New York Journal of January 6, 1841, said by breeder M.C.D. Borden to have been a 25-pound “cross between the bulldog and the English terrier,” fifty years before gaining American Kennel Club recognition as a dog topping out at 25 pounds. The “English terrier,” then a catch-all term for what are now recognized as a wide range of terriers originating in the British Isles, also formally recognized by the AKC in 1891, was first identified in print as such in 1817.
While the official American Kennel Club breed history recognizes that the Borden-type Boston terrier was used for ratting and pit fighting against other dogs of similar size before 1870, and had some bulldog ancestry, it includes no claim that the Boston terrier itself or any immediate Boston terrier ancestors were ever fought against bulls or other dogs (pit bulls) in the unlimited weight category.
Good information, Merritt & Beth Clifton. Thank you!
You got owned, Jane! But tell me, why do you hate kids so much?
Pitbull is actually an umbrella term for multiple breeds. Pitbull is not a breed. It’s an umbrella term.
Ban them all. Spay/neuter them out of existence – every last one of them. Hideous, aggressive, violent and extraordinarily stupid dogs.
Don’t think dogs are ‘stupid,’ weren’t “Pit bulls” designed, a/k/a genetically engineered by human species to torture bulls in pits? If all domestic dogs originated from wolves, they’re the most manipulated animals on earth. Don’t miss this case:
https://nypost.com/2022/07/19/i-slept-with-my-beloved-pit-bull-until-he-tried-to-eat-me-alive/?dicbo=v2-bd94915834946c9aaac58b1acf938761
Any so lets assume we do this… Lets assume for a minute we could wave a magic wand and eliminate every “pit bull” from the face of the earth…
Fact is some dog will always hold that #1 slot… So shall we just have no more dogs as pets and end 1000s of years of relationships between man and dog…
This fallacy has been uttered by pit bull advocates for more than a century, during which time the names used for pit bulls have diverged and proliferated much as have pit bulls themselves, but regardless of whatever breed name is used to describe them, the dogs themselves still look just as they did in Roman frescoes and medieval paintings of war dogs and fighting dogs, with only superficial cosmetic differences, whether called an Alaunt, a Cuban bloodhound, a bulldog, a bull mastiff, a Cane Corso, a Dogo Argentino, a Staffordshire, on & on. It is not the name that makes a pit bull; it is the function for which this type of dog has been line-bred for millennia, producing a combination of musculature, jaws, and reactivity found in none of the hundreds of other canine breed types, none of which can be mistaken for a pit bull.
We can only do our duty to slog through county elections, write letters. This is the ultimate alpha male dog. Women love it and so do men, until they kill? We have to slog, I write my city representatives, its too..oo expensive to take them off the streets, that is what I am told. Ugh, I’ve been walking in the parks for 35 to 40 years, and now I am afraid. Its often older women who have 2 pits. One 30 year old took 5 out of his HOA home!!! Yikes! my sanity of daily walking has been taken away from me by these insane people. They have charged my spaniels! And I immediately direct my dogs to the other side of the street once I realize I’m walking into Pit Territory!
What triggers owned pets for eight years with no previous incidents to attack ?
Genetics.