MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Mario Moore was mauled to death by a pack of dogs in southwest Memphis last week. But according to one woman, he may not have been the only person victimized by the same dogs.
When her brother Mario moved to Memphis a year ago, Makisha Moore never thought his life would end in a vicious dog attack.
“I just gasped,” Makisha Moore said. “It’s unreal. I would’ve never imagine something like that happening to anyone, let alone my brother.”
As she tries to make sense of this loss, she thinks of her brother`s warm smile and his children now without their father.
“In this situation, we’ll never get our brother back. No matter what’s done about this case, we will never get our brother back and I wouldn’t want anyone else to have to suffer the way he did on that street by himself,” she said.
Sherry Pruitt says she understands some of what Moore felt, because she says she was attacked while walking on that same street back in May.
“I knew that’s what was going to happen and that’s what I was trying to prevent,” Pruitt said. “I felt horrible for that family because I knew what it felt like for me and I made it. So I can’t imagine what that man went through.”
WREG showed her pictures of the dogs involved in Moore’s attack. She immediately recognized them.
“That’s the exact dog I described,” she said, looking at one of the pictures.
Pruitt questions why the dogs were still on the street three weeks after she emailed Memphis Animal Services about them.
“I just feel it’s negligent, because I did my part and that’s why. I knew that those animals were going to kill someone,” she said.
“I knew that those animals were going to kill someone.” – Sherry Pruitt
However, the shelter says it responded within 15 minutes of receiving the email asking for additional information, and didn’t get a response until Monday — after the attack.
They sent this statement that reads in part: “We take all calls for field response seriously, but sometimes citizens don`t provide all the needed information to make it possible for us to locate the dogs. That was sadly what happened in this case.”
Memphis Animal Services says its captured 12 dogs since the attack Thursday, and still has traps set and officers are still patrolling the area.
The shelter’s director says they will euthanize the ones that were involved in Moore’s deadly attack. The shelter has already determined that four of the dogs were not involved, and said they will be available for adoption or rescue.
