Timothy Hartman, 13, was walking home from school Monday along Memphis Avenue in Brooklyn.
A woman was on her phone and had her dog’s leash under her foot.
“The dog started creeping up towards me, and I started going faster and I put my hand out in case it tried to jump at me,” Timothy said.
That’s when the dog lunged at him, biting him so hard it punctured his bicep.
You can even see the outline of the dog’s teeth in his arm.
“I was shaking, because she only had the leash under her foot, and I wasn’t sure if the leash was going to come out from under her foot, or if it was going to come at me again,” Timothy said.
The bite was bad enough, but Timothy and his parents got really fired up when the woman left without calling for help or giving him contact information, so she could show proof the dog was up-to-date on his rabies shots.
Timothy said the dog that bit him was a white pit bull.
He knows pit bulls because he has one at home.
But it’s what the woman told him that also upset his parents.
“Go home and put a band-aid on it, it will be fine,” Timothy said she told him.
But it wasn’t fine.
He waved down a police officer who took him to get help.
Timothy needed stitches and five rabies shots. He has to go back for more shots three more times.
“Make sure a kid that was just bitten by your dog is safe and help him," said Timothy’s dad Chuck Hartman. "You could have contacted the police. The fire station was a hundred feet away from her, and she didn’t do any of that. She took off and left him there."
Timothy’s dad wants the dog found before somebody else gets hurt.
Brooklyn’s animal control officer said if the woman and her dog are found, a city ordinance would classify the dog as a dangerous dog for biting a person.
That means the dog would have to be muzzled in public, have a fenced yard or pen, and get liability insurance.
“We want her to be held accountable for what her dog did,” Hartman said.
Brooklyn police said if the woman is identified, she could also be charged for allowing an animal to be loose. That’s a minor misdemeanor which comes with a $100 fine.
