A New Zealand mother of six is recovering in hospital after suffering serious injuries, including the loss of a piece of her skull, when three pit bulls attacked her while she was walking her own dog.
Trudy Lee, 35, was just 100 meters from her home in Manurewa, south Auckland, when she saw the pack of stray dogs jumping down the street, but said she assumed they were running towards her dog and not her.
“My dog managed to get her collar loose because they were ready to attack her and she ran home,” Ms Lee told New Zealand Herald from his hospital bed.
But instead of chasing her pet, she said the three dogs knocked her to the ground and then one clung to her arm, another to her leg and the third to the top of her head.
“They tore the tendons out of my arm… They were more or less trying to destroy me.”
Ms Lee said she screamed, attracting the attention of neighbors who ran to her aid as the dogs fled.
She said bystanders called an ambulance and tried to help her stop the bleeding while an ambulance arrived.
He said he felt it took “a long time” because of the extent of his injuries and the pain he was in.
‘I was just trying to survive… I thought I was going to die on that trail. I was looking at my daughter because my children were in front of me. “They were shocked, they had never seen their mother like this.”
Tracy Lee, mother of six, has part of her skull torn off by a pack of three pit bulls
She is recovering in the hospital after multiple surgeries.
Auckland Council said it had located the dogs and euthanized them (file image)
She was given a blood transfusion in the back of the ambulance and rushed to nearby Middlemore Hospital.
Once there, doctors performed multiple surgeries, including skin grafts and an operation to plug the hole in her skull, and she is ready for more before being discharged.
Ms Lee said that during the first few nights in hospital she was afraid to sleep before because she was worried she wouldn’t wake up.
While he is “still in shock,” he said it could have been worse as there were elementary school-aged children from two nearby schools also walking down the street.
On top of that, she could have also easily had her two young daughters, ages 8 and 9, with her, as they sometimes accompany her when she walks the family dog.
TO give a little The page has been set up to help cover Ms Lee’s hospital bills.
Auckland Council said they had located the three dogs that have since been euthanized.
The incident is one of an alarming number of dog attacks in Auckland in recent years.
There was a 10 percent increase in the number of dog attacks from 2022 to 2023.
Pit bulls are prohibited from being imported into New Zealand, but they are already in the country.
The law requires them to be muzzled when on the street, but the three dogs that attacked Ms Lee were strays.