GREENVILLE, SC — A South Carolina woman was wrestling with her dogs when they turned on her without warning and bit off one arm and nearly chewed off the other, authorities said. Neighbors who witnessed the sudden attack helped pull the two boxer-mix dogs off 52-year-old Nancy Cherryl Burgess-Dismuke and called paramedics, but her injuries were so extensive and she died.
The deadly play session with the dogs occurred Thursday outside Burgess-Dismuke’s mobile home in Greenville, according to media reports. Paramedics applied tourniquets to what authorities said were “extremely severe” bite wounds on both arms, but Burgess-Dismuke went into cardiac arrest and died several hours later at Greenville Memorial Hospital after losing a significant amount of blood the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Neighbor Amber Greer, who called 911, described the horrific attack on the Burgess-Dismuke, who weighed about 80 pounds.
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“It went from looking like they were really playing to them really eating her alive,” Greer said, explaining to the newspaper that the dogs tried to drag Burgess-Dismuke’s body into her home.
“They were trying to kill Miss Nancy,” Greer told news station WYff. “They wanted Miss Nancy to die. I don’t know what their beef was with that lady, but they were trying to kill Miss Nancy.”
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To separate the animals from the woman, neighbor Denzel Whiteside armed himself with a blunt ax while his roommate, William Long, picked up a drive shaft that was laying beside a vehicle, and began beating them. Whiteside told the Greenville newspaper the time he and his roommate spent fighting off the dogs was “the longest 10 minutes of my life.”
He told WYFF that it was “almost like the dogs didn’t feel it at all.”
Burgess-Dismuke “threw her body over the fence” when she was free, Greer told the newspaper. “She didn’t jump; she threw her body like you never seen before. They were eating her.”
Senior Deputy Coroner Kent Dill told The Washington Post that Burgess-Dismuke was alert and talked with paramedics on the way to the hospital. An autopsy was ordered to determine the exact cause and manner of death, but results are pending.
Burgess-Dismuke, who was well-liked in the neighborhood, often allowed the dogs to gnaw on her arms as they wrestled, neighbors said. It’s unclear why they suddenly became aggressive.
The dogs were expected to be euthanized, authorities said.