The most recent death at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was 14 years ago. Seven Indianapolis-area residents have been killed by pit bulls since then.
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana––Two pit bulls who apparently did not want a bath on August 2, 2024 killed dog-sitter Kimberly Ann Williams at 637 Olin Avenue, Indianapolis, about a mile as the crow flies from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the renowned Indianapolis 500 auto race.
Little Eagle Creek, running through a small park across the street from where Kimberly Ann Williams died, in fact flows in a culvert beneath the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Pit bulls kill three in 14 months
Seventy-four people have died at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway since driver William Bourque on August 19, 1909 flipped his vehicle during the Prest-O-Lite Trophy Race, killing himself and riding mechanic Harry Holcomb, but none since motorcyclist Peter Lenz, 13, was hit by fellow racer Xavier Zayat, 12, on August 29, 2010.
The Lenz/Zayat accident made safety at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway ever more a priority, just a year after pit bull and no-kill sheltering advocates in 2009 killed a proposed At Risk Dogs ordinance that would have required that pit bulls be sterilized.
Kimberly Ann Williams, 60, also known as Kimberly Ann Hood and Kimberly Ann Greb, was the third person to be killed by pit bulls in Indianapolis just since May 9, 2023.
“They got in her flower bed”
“She was my grandma!” an apparent witness identifying herself as Rhylee Greb posted to social media. “She was watching them and they got in her flower bed, so she had to give them a bath. Well, the dogs didn’t like baths, so she didn’t know what to do but to give them a bath. So one dog bit her and then the other one did. Then they started to kill her.”
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police responded to an emergency call at about 6:16 p.m.
“The victim was watching the dogs while the owner was away,” a police spokesperson told local news media.
Unclear is whether Kimberly Ann Williams was staying at 637 Olin Avenue, a 1948-vintage bungalow with a large fenced yard, while looking after the dogs. A trailer home was parked in front of the house.
The listed owner of the house, since January 2014, has been one Timothy Wagner, age 65. There are several Timothy Wagners––and for that matter, several people named Kimberly Williams––residing in Indianapolis.
Killed trying to protect others
The two previous Indianapolis pit bull victims both died trying to protect others, as may also have been the case with Kimberly Ann Williams.
17-year Marion County Sheriff’s Office deputy Tamieka C. White, 46, was fatally mauled at her Indianapolis home on the evening of May 9, 2023 as she struggled to keep the pit bull who killed her away from her already injured eight-year-old son Tristan.
(See Tamieka White: 3rd Indianapolis-area mom sacrificed to pit bulls in 3 years.)
Willie Mundine, 85, was killed on January 30, 2024.
Indianapolis Animal Care Services, reported Kaitlyn Kendall and James Howell Jr. of WRTV, failed the day before to find two free-roaming pit bulls reported to have menaced neighbors in Willie Mundine’s neighborhood.
(Family handout).
“He couldn’t get in fast enough”
Those two pit bulls were believed to be part of the same pack of three pit bulls who broke into Mundine’s back yard the next day, threatening Betty Mundine.
“My granddaddy came out to try to shoo them away,” Willie and Betty Mundine’s granddaughter Holly Watkins told WRTV reporters Kendall and Howell.
“We ran and he couldn’t get in fast enough. Two pit bulls, I guess, they attacked him,” Watkins recounted.
Willie Mundine and Betty Mundine were both pastors at the Faith Tabernacle Apostolic Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.
(See Pit bulls kill four in last two days of January 2024.)
Reported dog bites soaring
Kendall and Howell noted that reported dog bites in Indianapolis rose from 720 in 2021 to 834 in 2022, and 1,135 in 2023.
But Indianapolis, including the greater Indianapolis metropolitan area, has a long history of largely ignoring dangerous dogs, especially pit bulls, whom a succession of animal control directors and executive directors of the Indianapolis Humane Society have vigorously defended, despite at least seven pit bull-inflicted fatalities since 2005 and many severely disfiguring injuries.
Animal control chief killed pit bull sterilization ordinance
Noting that the Indianapolis Animal Services shelter, as the Indianapolis Animal Care Services was then called, was perpetually filled with unadoptable pit bulls, then-Indianapolis city councilor Mike Speedy in 2009 introduced a proposed At Risk Dogs bylaw, modeled after legislation in effect in San Francisco since January 2006.
The San Francisco bylaw in only two years achieved a 23% reduction in shelter intakes of pit bulls and a 33% reduction in the number of pit bulls killed by animal control.
The At Risk Dogs bylaw was killed, however, by opposition led by then-Indianapolis animal control chief Doug Rae.
(See Why Nathan Winograd disciple Doug Rae won’t be Canonized.)
Speedy, later elected to state office, now appears to be out of politics.
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Mass psychosis threatens everyone.
Sharing with gratitude.
You can adopt a pitbull from Animal Care and Control in Indianapolis for free. That includes sterilization. Although sterilization is important, it does not improve the temperament of many dogs. So adopted dogs can kill.
Also the executive director of IACC position was a revolving door until the organization found a pro-pit adoption person. Making them free helped to manage the number residing at IACC.
I am not a person advocating to destroy all pitbulls. Mandatory sterilization should control the number.