(Beth Clifton collage)
Nowhere is safe, despite U.K. “XL Bully” ban
CHICAGO, Illinois; BIRMINGHAM, U.K.; JACKSONVILLE, Arkansas––Chicago police are reportedly still investigating how Keshon Bullock, 32, of Cicero on the South Side came to be lying dead on the evening of August 24, 2024, “covered in dog bites,” in the downstairs vestibule of a duplex flat in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side, four miles north.
The Cook County medical examiner confirmed that Bullock died of multiple injuries from a dog mauling.
Police said several dogs, believed to be pit bulls, were discovered in one of the building apartments.
Bullock’s death brought the U.S. toll for 2024 up to 43 dog attack fatalities, at least 29 of them by pit bull, with more than four months of the year to go. Both the total number of dog attack deaths and the number by pit bulls would have been records for a full year as recently as 2010.
Keshawn Bullock. (Facebook photo)
“Foul stench coming from the garden”
Bullock was killed three days after the death of Nicholas Glass, 32, of Coleshill, West Midlands, United Kingdom, was discovered in the back garden of a rundown home at 88 Hereford Close, Rubery, 25 miles away from Coleshill by the M42 motorway around the south side of Birmingham.
Glass, known only as “Niko” to Hereford Close neighbors, but believed to be a brother of the homeowner, was not identified to media for five days.
“Neighbor Charlene Newman, 40, told the Mail she had called the police after smelling a foul stench coming from the garden,” wrote Daily Mail reporter Jack Hardy.
“She said: ‘It was a really bad smell. Like something rotting and it was coming from the bottom of the hedge in the back garden. I didn’t see a body but then the police came and put up a tent while they recovered it.”
Nicholas “Niko” Glass. (Facebook photo)
“Bloody scratches on the window frame”
Added another neighbor, identifying himself to Hardy only as Shane, “We just don’t know what happened, but you can see bloody scratches on the window frame at the back of the house. Maybe the guy who died was attacked by dogs in the house and tried to get out of the window and then died in the garden without anyone realizing he was there.”
Reported Harry Leach for the Birmingham Mail, “Police seized four dogs––two of whom were [banned] XL Bullies without exemption certificates.”
The two XL Bullies were found two miles away, after a multi-day search, at a location called Merritt’s Hill.
“We received information from the public which helped us track them down,” a police spokesperson said.
The other two dogs, also pit bull variants, were impounded at the scene of the attack.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Complaints fell on deaf ears”
Continued Leach, “A resident contacted West Midlands Police and Birmingham City Council with claims of ‘dangerous dogs’ at the [Hereford Close] address a year before.
“But the Hereford Close local, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed the complaints fell on deaf ears.”
“I first made complaints in August last year,” the resident told Leach. “This could have been prevented.”
“The force this week confirmed to us,” Leach wrote, “that it had ‘received a number of calls from a concerned resident around dogs loose in the street.’ Officers attended the location and searched the area, but said they were unable to trace the dogs.”
David Daintree. (Facebook photo)
Victim Daintree “looked after XL Bully for a friend”
Nicolas Glass was found dead one day after David Daintree, 53, was found on August 20, 2024, fatally mauled an XL Bully at his home in Accrington, Lancashire.
“Daintree’s daughter, Joanne Trezise, insisted her father didn’t own the dog but had simply offered to look after it for a friend temporarily,” reported Liz Hull for the Daily Mail and Ryan Prosser for Mailonline.
“He had the biggest heart of gold and because he was on his own, missing his late wife,” who died in July 2021, “he wanted some company,” Trezise said.
Four of the seven British dog attack fatalities in 2024 have been inflicted by the XL Bully supersized pit bull variant, banned since the beginning of the year; five of the seven victims altogether were killed by pit bulls.
Daintree was the second fatality who was reportedly looking after an XL Bully for someone else.
(See United Kingdom dog attack fatalities, 1991-present.)
Reuben Pierce. (Legacy.com photo)
$15 million award for damages
A fourth pit bull fatality came to light within the five-day span including the Bulllock, Glass, and Daintree deaths, when Judge Sanders Huckabee of Jacksonville, Arkansas awarded the survivors of Reuben Pierce, 70, $5 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages.
The awards are essentially symbolic, since defendants Kenneth Cash and Jennifer Swartz, believed to have been backyard pit bull breeders, appear to have no likelihood of satisfying the judgement.
Pierce, mauled by the defendants’ pit bulls on October 30, 2023, “was hospitalized and received medical care from October 30, 2023, until he passed away on January 24, 2024,” according to the court filings.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Multiple attacks, but law enforcement did nothing
Pierce, his Legacy obituary said, “worked at Walmart, Goodwill, and Edward’s Grocery in Jacksonville, Arkansas, for many years.”
Cash and Swartz bought a house across the street from Pierce in March 2023. Their pit bulls attacked multiple other neighbors during the next seven months, but law enforcement, if even notified, took no effective action.
The attack on Pierce was not reported by local media.
Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.
Following the Pierce attack, two of the Cash and Swartz pit bulls reportedly attacked another neighbor, who shot both pit bulls dead.
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