The pit bull mix that mauled a runner last week is believed to have attacked a Southeast Portland woman’s dog two months earlier, Multnomah County officials confirmed.
Kara Bloom said she was on a routine morning walk just before 6 a.m. Feb. 3 when another dog pounced on her poodle mix Rocky on Southeast Clinton Street between 26th and 27th avenues and punctured his lung.
Over the weekend, she sent a photo of the attack dog, its apparent owner and a van they had been staying in to Multnomah County Animal Services after seeing news reports on the runner’s mauling.
In an email, Animal Services Officer Megan Schiewe responded that it appears to be the same pit bull mix that left more than 35 wounds on the legs, right arm and back of Cheryl Wakerhauser on April 17 and the same owner, Jessie Miller, who subsequently disappeared with the dog.
Wakerhouser was mauled as she was running east past a vacant, graffiti-covered building on Southeast Hawthorne Avenue near 45th Avenue last Monday morning.
Portland police located the dog a few blocks away and turned it over to an Animal Services officer, who took it to the county’s Troutdale shelter. But the county then released it for what it called “community quarantine,” allowing Miller’s mother to take the dog to her home in Washington to watch it. Jesse Miller, 37, went to the Camas home, removed the dog while his mother was at work and left, his mother told the county the next day.
State health codes require a 10-day quarantine to give officials time to determine whether an animal has rabies. After losing track of the pit bull mix, the county changed its policy, requiring a quarantine only at the county shelter for any dog that has severely bitten a person or animal, escaped from its owner at the time of a bite, doesn’t have current rabies vaccinations on file or whose owners don’t live in Multnomah County.
Photo from February of the pit bull mix Bubbie and the van he was seen in with his owner, Jessie Miller, on Southeast 18th Avenue, between Clinton and Division streets. Both Miller and his dog are being sought by Multnomah County Animal Services.
The Animal Services officer told Bloom that its officers are patrolling the area, looking for Miller and the van. If they find the dog, they’ll take it to the shelter, Schiewe wrote. The photo of the van and its license plate also may allow police to help search, she said in the email to Bloom.
On the morning of the February attack, Bloom first noticed the pit bull mix running after a bicyclist, so she said she stopped walking to avoid drawing the attention of the unleashed dog.
She said saw a man and a woman run after the dog and grab it away from the bicyclist, so Bloom continued walking with her dog.
She said she had assumed the man and woman had put a leash on their dog.
“But the dog wasn’t on a leash and they let him go,” Bloom said. “Before I knew it, the dog was standing over my dog and dug his teeth into him.”
A neighbor’s Ring security camera caught her dog’s howls from the attack.
Bloom said the same man and woman ran up and pulled their dog off of hers. She carried her bleeding dog home and took him to her veterinarian.
The neighbor’s video caught a man and woman carrying the bigger dog back to a white van with maroon stripes. Earlier in the video, a woman could be heard leaving the van, and whistling and calling for “Bubbie.”
Rocky required surgery on both sides of his chest wall and needed a chest tube to drain his lungs, one of which was punctured, Bloom said. Her vet bill was more than $3,300. Rocky needed 24-hour care for two weeks, she said.
She had immediately reported the dog attack to Animal Services and police.
“Animal control told me there was nothing that they could do but give the guy a citation for not having his dog on a leash,” she said.
The white van with maroon stripes that Jessie Miller and his pit bull mix Bubbie were seen staying in near Southeast Clinton Street in February.
When she learned of Wakerhauser’s attack, she contacted Wakerhauser and shared photos and video of the van with Animal Services. “Same dog mauled my dog!!” Bloom wrote to her in an email she shared.
“We believe now it is the same dog,” confirmed Julie Sullivan-Springhetti, county spokesperson, on Monday.
As of Monday afternoon, Bubbie, and its owner had not been located, she said. Animal Services is continuing to look for both.
“It’s horrible,” Bloom said. “We can’t walk in our own neighborhoods without being terrified. The dog is still out there.”
— Maxine Bernstein
Email mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian
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