Seven pit bulls maul man for 23 minutes, caught on video; injure rescuer too.
KANSAS CITY, Missouri––Juanita L. Sanchez, 35, staying with friends in Fontana, California, and an unidentified homeless man reportedly living in Perris Hill Park, San Bernardino, California, had already been fatally attacked by multiple pit bulls each on November 3, 2024, but Chris Culbertson, 46, did not know that when at about 10 p.m. that evening he bicycled down a dead end street in southern Kansas City, wearing a heavy backpack and pulling a roller suitcase, apparently on his way to camp.
First one and then two pit bulls, and eventually seven broke through a board fence to attack Culbertson.
A neighbor’s security camera reportedly caught the entire 23-minute episode on video.
Victim “previously owned a pit bull”
The victim’s sister, Angela Culbertson, 38, who lives around 20 miles away on the far north side of Kansas City, told Megan Abundis of KSHB television news that “Culbertson was actually a dog lover himself and had previously owned a pit bull,” Abundis paraphrased.
Facebook photos indicate that Angela Culbertson also owns, or has owned, at least two pit bulls.
”The doctor said there were over 300 dog bites, over 500 stitches, and 100 lacerations,” Angela Culbertson recounted. “They ripped his cheek off, his chin, his heels of his feet.”
The video, reported Abundis, “shows Culbertson with his bike on the street. Two dogs start to circle, giving him trouble and biting at him.
“Culbertson eventually falls to the ground. Then, two more dogs break through the fence and attack, taking hold of his arms, legs, feet and face with their teeth.”
“Trying to drag me like I was their dinner”
Said Angela Culbertson, “He told me, ‘They were trying to drag me like I was their dinner.’”
Though Culbertson survived the initial attack, he died from septic infection on November 6, 2024.
A female neighbor responded to Culbertson’s screams.
“She ran to help and tried using a golf club to fight off the dogs, but the animals started biting her. She ran and called 911,” Abundis said.
“The second victim was transported to an area hospital in serious condition,” Abundis finished.
KC Pet Project won repeal of Kansas City pit bull ban
Culbertson died amid a running dispute over who should manage animal control in Kansas City, where pit bulls were banned from 1990 to 2019.
The Kansas City pit bull ban, and pit bull bans once in effect in most Kansas City suburbs, fell one by one to aggressive lobbying by the Animal Friends Foundation, Best Friends Animal Society, and the American SPCA (ASPCA).
The local point group for the bans to be lifted, the KC Pet Project, founded by pit bull advocate Brent Toellner, won the Kansas City animal shelter management contract in 2012.
Toellner left in 2016 to become senior director of national programs for the Best Friends Animal Society, working to dismantle pit bull bans in other cities. His chosen successor at the KC Pet Project, Tori Fugate, subsequently won the entire Kansas City animal control contract.
KC Pet Project contract ended but was extended through 2025
KC Pet Project “has handled animal control services in Kansas City for the past four years, with an emphasis on education for pet owners,” recounted Sam Zeff of KCUR in July 2024. Zeff described an attack by a pit bull named Jonesy, who “Over the course of three days in May 2024 attacked a herd of sheep working to clear honeysuckle in a nature preserve in south Kansas City.
“Two sheep were killed, another suffered a severe bite, and another was missing for weeks around the Blue River before returning to the herd.”
Despite that, Zeff reported, the pit bull was not impounded.
“After numerous calls to KC Pet Project, the dog’s owner, Gerald Salisbury, was charged with one misdemeanor count of animal nuisance,” Zeff said.
“KC Pet Project’s contract with the city ended on April 30. 2024,” Zeff continued, but the contract was extended through 2025.
KC Pet Project responds ineffectively or not at all
Meanwhile, whenever Kansas City again solicits bids on the animal control contract, “KC Pet Project is planning to bid, Zeff reported.
The Mount Prospect Homeowners Association “wrote to police and city officials in April 2024, ‘We have reported off-leash dogs to Animal Control on more than three occasions recently and have received zero support in containing the dogs. This is a major safety concern for our residents, including seniors, children and pets, who live in this community,’” Zeff mentioned.
Zeff also described a string of pit bull attacks on other dogs and even humans, to which KC Pet Project responded ineffectively or not at all.
“Growing pit bull population”
Zeff noted a “growing pit bull population in Kansas City. On July 1, 2024,” Zeff said, “there were 288 dogs listed for adoption on the KC Pet Project website. Exactly half — 144 — were pit bulls.”
This was Zeff’s second survey of KC Pet Project dogs offered for adoption. “Of the 249 dogs offered for adoption on the KC Pet Project web site as of May 30, 2023, “ Zeff wrote then, “222––89%––were either pit bulls or pit mixes with pit bull traits clearly dominant.
“In Kansas City, pet owners must spay or neuter pit bulls,” Zeff explained, “a policy KC Pet Project has long opposed, reflected in the way it enforces the ordinance.
“Last year,” Zeff detailed, “KC Pet Project wrote just 48 tickets for failure to spay or neuter pit bulls, according to data from Kansas City Municipal Court. That is 74% fewer tickets than the organization issued in 2020 when it took over animal control and 88% fewer than 2019, the last year the city ran animal control.”
S/N surgeries on pit bulls down by two-thirds
The nonprofit Kansas City spay/neuter clinic Chain of Hope previously did “30 surgeries a month for [pit bull] owners who didn’t want to pay the fine. Now, they only do ten a month,” Zeff learned.
KC Pet Project “wrote 762 citations last year, according to its 2023 annual report,” Zeff added, and “filed seven state and felony level cases with the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office. KC Pet Project called that an ‘unprecedented accomplishment.’
“However, of the seven cases filed with the prosecutor, only four have been charged, according to prosecutor spokesman Mike Mansur,” Zeff wrote. “Also, the 762 citations written last year is a massive decrease compared to the 3,683 tickets written by the city in 2019.”
“Our focus is on significant offenses that genuinely require legal intervention and when all other methods of enforcement have failed to gain compliance,” Fugate said.
Increase in dangerous dog citations
“KC Pet Project’s annual report does show an increase in the number of dangerous dog citations written,” Zeff acknowledged. “In 2019 the city wrote two such tickets. Last year KCPP wrote 17 and wrote 22 in 2022.”
Zeff has been monitoring KC Pet Project performance, and non-performance, for several years now.
“For three hours on April 22, 2023,” reported Zeff on May 30, 2023, “two pit bulls named Branch and Nia—a mother and daughter—menaced a Kansas City neighborhood.
“The pair attacked three people, including a child on a bike who managed to kick the dogs and escape.
“Sent a woman to the hospital with 20 bite wounds”
“They sent a woman to the hospital with 20 bite wounds, several of them labeled very serious.
“They then forced a man to jump on top of a car to escape the attack after he was bitten 13 times, according to municipal court documents.
“Neighbors,” wrote Zeff, “said Branch and Nia—both unspayed—roamed freely around the neighborhood.
“It wasn’t until the next afternoon, 24 hours after the triple attack, that an animal service officer from KC Pet Project finally made contact with the owner and managed to quarantine the dogs.”
KC Pet Project, meanwhile, did finally charge the owner of the two pit bulls who went on the unprovoked April 22, 2023 rampage with 10 offenses.
Both pit bulls were “humanely euthanized due to the severity of the bites and attacks,” KC Pet Project told Zeff, but as a no-kill organization, KC Pet Project also objects in principle to behavioral euthanasia.
Questionable history & attitude
KC Pet Project, even before taking over Kansas City animal control, had a questionable history and attitude about protecting the public and non-bully breed pets from dog attacks.
On November 6, 2016, for instance, Kansas City Animal Control, then a city agency, impounded a Cane Corso who had injured a young couple who were out for a walk.
Then-Kansas City Animal Control division manager Patrick Egberuare reportedly emailed KC Pet Project executive director Teresa Johnson, telling her ‘please do not release to owner or transfer ownership,’ stating that ‘the dog needs to be euthanized.’”
Mauled owner’s father
Instead, about 24 hours later, KC Pet Project returned the Cane Corso to the female owner. On November 13, 2016, the Cane Corso attacked the owner’s 54-year-old father, who was hospitalized for at least four days with undisclosed injuries.
KC Pet Project director of marketing and development Tori Fugate told Fox 4 reporter Robert Townsend that the shelter quarantined the Cane Corso for 10 days after the November 6, 2016 attack, as required by law.
But, had the Cane Corso remained in quarantine for 10 days from November 6, the attack on November 13, 2016 could not have happened.
(See Kansas City Pet Project dog attack claims don’t add up.)
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When people say, “Your money or your life!” it’s not the latter they care about. And between the gun nuts, the pit bull nuts, and the just plain crazy-as-a-$%!^house-rat nuts, the rest of us aren’t having safe, happy lives, whether in the US or in the UK, SA, or anywhere else these groups hold sway. Some kind of “freedom,” isn’t it?
Sharing with gratitude.
Fugate is a pitbull propagandist just like every other no kill shelter director. She gets on Kansas City radio stations, always with a fawning radio host to praise her every word, to crow about all the BSL neighborhoods who have repealed all their lifesaving canine legislation.
Despite repealing almost all BSL in both Kansas and Missouri neighborhoods with the exception of unrelenting Leawood, the shelters remain packed to bursting with non adoptable pit bulls who need to be the “only dog in the home, no small children”.
Nightly, there are TV spots on the evening news for fosters and for people to buy these pit bull types. The last I heard Tori on a sympathetic broadcast on the radio she was begging for people to buy “cattle dog mix” puppies that had been dumped at her shelter. A Quick Look at the KCPP website showed these were pit bull mixes that simply had some spots.